Using optical tweezing to control phase separation and nucleation near a liquid–liquid critical point

• Published in: Soft matter Vol. 15; no. 41; pp. 8279 - 8289
• Main Authors: Walton, Finlay, Wynne, Klaas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Royal Society of Chemistry 2019
• Subjects: Critical point; Crystals; Lasers; Nucleation; Phase separation; Thermophoresis; Variation

About 20 years ago, it was shown that lasers can nucleate crystals in super-saturated solutions and might even be able to select the polymorph that crystallises. However, no theoretical model was found explaining the results and progress was slowed down. Here we show that laser-induced nucleation ma...