Ligancy effects on nucleation kinetics

Nucleation of particles into crystalline structures can be observed in a wide range of systems from metallic and metal-organic compounds to colloidal and polymeric patch particles. Here, we perform kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to study the nucleation kinetics of particles with different ligancies z at constant supersaturation s. This approach allows one to determine several physico-chemical quantities as a function of s, including the growth probability P(n), the critical nucleus size n*, and the stationary nucleation rate J_s. Our numerical results are rationalized in terms of a self-consistent nucleation theory where both n* and J_s present a non-trivial dependence on s, but which can be determined from the values of effective z-dependent parameters.