Kinetics of ion-induced nucleation in a vapor-gas mixture

A general solution for the steady-state ion-induced nucleation kinetics has been derived, considering the differences between ion-induced nucleation and homogeneous nucleation. This solution includes a new effect for nucleation kinetics, the interaction of charged clusters with vapor molecules. Analytical expressions for the ion-induced nucleation rate have been obtained for the limiting cases of high and low thermodynamic barriers. The physical explanation of the so-called sign effect is proposed based on multipole expansion of an electric field of the cluster ion. This theory gives good agreement with experiments and is used to elucidate experimentally observed phenomena.