Nucleation kinetics in a CuCl solid solution in glass: Calculation and comparison with experiment

The kinetics of formation of CuCl nanoparticles in a glass has been studied. The experimental results obtained have been compared with the results of calculations. A method has been developed for calculating the nucleation kinetics, which decreases the time of calculations by a factor of several tens. This has been achieved using the joint kinetic equation for distributions of clusters over the number of particles and over the radius. The distributions over the number of particles and over the radius have been used for small and large clusters, respectively. The concentration of molecules near the surface of clusters has been determined from the asymptotic solution of the diffusion equation. For subcritical clusters, the concentration of molecules near the cluster surface has been taken to be equal to the average concentration in the solid solution. This method has been used to calculate the nucleation kinetics of CuCl nanoparticles in a glass. The results obtained from the calculation of the time dependences of the increase in the concentration and average radius of clusters agree well with experiment.