Crystallization of Micro- and Nanoparticles: Crystal Growth and Kinetics

Dear Colleagues,

I am delighted to introduce this Special Issue dedicated to highlighting recent developments in our understanding of mechanisms and kinetics of crystal growth.

The field of crystal growth, with its long and rich history, aims to explore the underlying mechanisms involved in crystallization processes and enable the technology to produce crystal particles with desired characteristics for a wide variety of applications.

The evolution of classical crystallization theory over the past century has allowed us to not only predict crystal growth rates but also control crystal phase, size, uniformity and morphology, by revealing two principal elements that dictate crystallization processes: thermodynamics and kinetics. The thermodynamic factors of a system, constituting the driving force for crystal formation and growth, determine the behavior of material phases and how they crystallize with respect to state variables such as concentration, temperature and pressure. Meanwhile, kinetic factors influence the growth rate, degree of perfection and uniformity of the crystals. Based on this framework that defines crystal growth by the monomeric addition of building units, we can explain morphology development from polyhedral crystals to dendrites and spherulites as a function of thermodynamic driving force and conduct quantitative analyses of growth kinetics with certain assumptions in place. Yet, the classical theory is not unrivalled and has been challenged in the last several decades by the so-called nonclassical hypotheses, which attribute crystal growth to the aggregation or assembly of nanoparticles and define effective parameters of growth related to colloidal stability and assembly mechanisms. The classical and nonclassical frameworks have created the most contradiction and debate in explaining the formation mechanisms of branched crystals and polycrystalline particles with nanosized subunits and nanoparticulate surface features. In addition, they have inferred different roles of additives on how they can modulate crystal growth in correlation with the proposed formation pathways. As a result of these discords, we have witnessed a remarkable progress in the field, with strong contributions from in-situ experimental techniques with high spatiotemporal resolution, and computer simulation models such as Monte Carlo simulations, density functional theory and phase field modelling.

This Special Issue is devoted to collecting state-of-the-art contributions on a broad range of topics related, but not limited to, crystal growth mechanisms, classical and nonclassical theories of crystal growth, morphology development, and experimental and theoretical studies of growth kinetics for all classes of materials.

I look forward to receiving your submissions.

Dr. Seniz Ucar
Guest Editor

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• Crystal growth mechanisms
• Experimental and theoretical methods for the determination of growth kinetics
• Morphology development
• Additives in crystal growth
• Simulation models of crystal nucleation and growth