Solidification kinetics of hard-sphere colloidal suspensions

We investigate the solidification dynamics of hard-sphere colloidal suspensions applying simultaneously small-angle and Bragg light scattering. These experiments allots a consistent picture of nucleation and crystal growth on the level of large-scale density fluctuations and or density fluctuations Oil the level of individual crystallites. We observe a temporally almost constant nucleation rate after all induction time that decreases with supersaturation. The classical expectation for the nucleation rate density as a function of supersaturation is in accordance with our data. We investigate the validity or the Wilson-Frenkel growth law for hard-sphere systems, which also fits our data satisfactorily. The kinetic prefactors are found to be only 2 orders of magnitude smaller (for nucleation) and 1 order of magnitude larger (for crystal growth) than expected from classical considerations. We discuss the influences of particle size polydispersity on our data.