论文标题
化学活性液滴的成核
Nucleation of chemically active droplets
论文作者
论文摘要
驱动的化学反应可以控制液滴的宏观特性，例如它们的大小。这种活性液滴对于构建生物细胞内部至关重要。细胞还需要控制液滴出现的位置和何时出现，因此它们需要控制液滴成核。我们的数值模拟表明，如果反应稳定均匀状态，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屏障，从而实现了成核时间增加的定量预测。此外，替代模型使我们能够构造一个相图，该图总结了反应如何影响均相相和液滴状态的稳定性。这张简单的图片提供了对驱动反应如何延迟成核的准确预测，这与理解生物细胞和化学工程的液滴有关。
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.
