Heterogeneous Crystallization on Pairs of Pre-Structured Seeds

Studying the effects of small pre-structured seeds on the crystallization transition in an undercooled monodisperse Lennard-Jones fluid with transition interface path sampling combined with molecular dynamics simulations, we analyze the impact of the simultaneous presence of two seeds with various structures. In the presence of seeds with face- and body-centered cubic structures, we find that decreasing the seed-to-seed distance enhances the probability of the crystalline clusters formed on one of the seeds to grow beyond the critical size, thus, increasing the crystal nucleation rates. In contrast, when seeds have an icosahedral structure, the crystalline clusters form mostly in the bulk. The crystal nucleation rate, however, is also determined by the distance between the seeds with regular structure in which the lattice spacing is equal to the bulk lattice constant, pointing to a heterogeneous crystal nucleation that occurs away from the icosahedrally structured seeds. For slightly squeezed seeds, the effects of the presence of seeds with face- and body-centered cubic structures are reduced in comparison to the regular seeds, and we do not see any effect of the presence of the second seed for seeds with squeezed icosahedral structure.