Ostwald Ripening denotes the late stage coarsening in a first order phase transition, where second phase particles interact by diffusional mass exchange to reduce their total surface area. In the low volume fraction regime the statistics of the ripening process can be described by the classical mean-field theory by Lifshitz, Slyozov and Wagner (LSW). However, due to several shortcomings of this theory, we are interested in higher order effects which are due to the finite volume fraction of particles. We compare the effects of screening induced fluctuations in
particle densities with the ones induced by coalescence of particles.
|