Local composition fluctuations act as precursors for crystal nucleation in polydisperse hard spheres

Abstract

We revisit the effect of polydispersity on the crystal nucleation of hard spheres. Using event-driven molecular dynamics simulations, we obtain the nucleation rate as a function of the supersaturation for a range of polydispersities, and demonstrate that the nucleation rate of polydisperse hard spheres deviates from the trend of monodisperse hard spheres, even when mapped to the effective packing fraction. Furthermore, we show that nucleation tends to originate in regions with on average more larger-sized particles, indicating that such regions act as precursors for nucleation in systems of polydisperse hard spheres.