An analysis of refractory silicate nucleation via the theory of the physical spinodal

An analysis of experimental data has been conducted using the theory of the spinodal, as a test of its applicability to refractory vapors. A promising aspect of this approach is its prediction of a temperature and supersaturation at which there no longer exists a barrier to nucleation; such a phenomenon has been observed in both the SiO-H2 and MgSiO-H2 systems, where a small change in ambient temperature yielded 5-10 orders of magnitude increases in the nucleation rate within a few seconds.