Recent theories and simulations suggest that molecular additives can bind to the surfaces of nuclei, lower the surface energy, and accelerate nucleation. Experiments have shown that oligomeric and polymeric additives can also modify nucleation rates of proteins, ice, and minerals; however, general design principles for oligomeric or polymeric promoters do not yet exist. Here we investigate oligomeric additives for which each segment of the oligomer can bind to surfaces of nuclei. We use semigrand canonical Monte Carlo simulations in a Potts lattice gas model to study the effects of oligomer chain length, volume fraction, and binding strength. We find that increasing each of those parameters lowers the nucleation barrier. At extremely low oligomer concentrations, the nucleation kinetics can be modeled as though each oligomer is a heterogeneous nucleation site in solution.

中文翻译：

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可溶性寡聚成核剂：链长，结合强度和体积分数效应的模拟

最近的理论和模拟表明，分子添加剂可以与核表面结合，降低表面能并加速成核。实验表明，低聚和聚合物添加剂也可以改变蛋白质，冰和矿物质的成核速率；然而，低聚或聚合启动子的一般设计原理尚不存在。在这里，我们研究了低聚物添加剂，其低聚物的每个片段都可以与核表面结合。我们在Potts晶格气体模型中使用半盛大的规范蒙特卡罗模拟来研究低聚物链长，体积分数和结合强度的影响。我们发现增加这些参数中的每一个都会降低成核壁垒。在极低的低聚物浓度下，