The seeding method is an approximate approach to investigate nucleation that combines molecular dynamics simulations with classical nucleation theory. Recently, this technique has been successfully implemented in a broad range of nucleation studies. However, its accuracy is subject to the arbitrary choice of the order parameter threshold used to distinguish liquid-like from solid-like molecules. We revisit here the crystallization of NaCl from a supersaturated brine solution and show that consistency between seeding and rigorous methods, like Forward Flux Sampling (from previous work) or spontaneous crystallization (from this work), is achieved by following a mislabelling criterion to select such threshold (i.e. equaling the fraction of the mislabelled particles in the bulk parent and nucleating phases). This work supports the use of seeding to obtain fast and reasonably accurate nucleation rate estimates and the mislabelling criterion as one giving the relevant cluster size for classical nucleation theory in crystallization studies.

中文翻译：

---

NaCl 在过饱和溶液中的均匀成核

播种法是一种将分子动力学模拟与经典成核理论相结合的研究成核的近似方法。最近，该技术已在广泛的成核研究中成功实施。然而，其准确性取决于用于区分类液体和类固体分子的顺序参数阈值的任意选择。我们在这里重新审视了 NaCl 从过饱和盐水溶液中的结晶，并表明通过遵循错误标记标准来选择这种方法，可以实现播种和严格方法之间的一致性，例如正向通量采样（来自之前的工作）或自发结晶（来自本工作）阈值（即等于母体相和成核相中错误标记粒子的比例）。这项工作支持使用晶种来获得快速且合理准确的成核率估计，并将错误标记标准作为结晶研究中经典成核理论的相关簇大小。