Homogeneous nucleation in inhomogeneous media. II. Nucleation in a shear flow.

We investigate the influence of a shear flow on the process of nucleation. Mesoscopic nonequilibrium thermodynamics is used to derive the Fokker–Planck equation governing the evolution of the cluster size distribution in a metastable phase subjected to a stationary flow. The presence of the flow manifests itself in the expression for the effective diffusion coefficient of a cluster and introduces modifications in the nucleation rate. The implications of these results in condensation and polymer crystallization are discussed. © 2003 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]