An Insight into the Failure of Classical Nucleation Theory

We have calculated the work of formation of Lennard–Jones (LJ) and water clusters with Monte Carlo simulations. A comparison to classical nucleation theory shows that down to very small cluster sizes, the liquid drop model accurately describes the work required to add a monomer to the cluster. The liquid drop model only fails in its description of the smallest of clusters. This results in an erroneous absolute value for the cluster work of formation throughout the whole size range. Keywords Nucleation theory, cluster