Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Am Faßberg 17 37077, Göttingen, Germany.
Phys Rev Lett. 2023 Jun 16;130(24):248201. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.248201.
Driven chemical reactions can control the macroscopic properties of droplets, like their size. Such active droplets are critical in structuring the interior of biological cells. Cells also need to control where and when droplets appear, so they need to control droplet nucleation. Our numerical simulations demonstrate that reactions generally suppress nucleation if they stabilize the homogeneous state. An equilibrium surrogate model reveals that reactions increase the effective energy barrier of nucleation, enabling quantitative predictions of the increased nucleation times. Moreover, the surrogate model allows us to construct a phase diagram, which summarizes how reactions affect the stability of the homogeneous phase and the droplet state. This simple picture provides accurate predictions of how driven reactions delay nucleation, which is relevant for understanding droplets in biological cells and chemical engineering.
驱动化学反应可以控制液滴的宏观性质，例如它们的大小。这种活性液滴对于构建生物细胞的内部结构至关重要。细胞还需要控制液滴出现的位置和时间，因此它们需要控制液滴成核。我们的数值模拟表明，如果反应稳定均相状态，则通常会抑制成核。平衡替代模型表明，反应增加了成核的有效能垒，从而能够定量预测成核时间的增加。此外，该替代模型使我们能够构建相图，该相图总结了反应如何影响均相相和液滴状态的稳定性。这个简单的图提供了有关驱动反应如何延迟成核的准确预测，这对于理解生物细胞和化学工程中的液滴很有意义。
