Energy fluctuations in steady-state binary nucleation

An analytical method to obtain the steady-state nucleation flux of binary liquid droplets is developed. The method is based on the solution of a Fokker-Planck equation for the concentration of clusters where both number (size) and cluster-energy fluctuations are included. The Fokker-Planck equation is solved in the vicinity of the saddle point. The kinetic prefactor is found to depend on the product of the three eigenvalues of a matrix that describes fluctuations about the critical cluster. The explicit, analytical expression for the total steady-state nucleation rate is applied to the water-ethanol binary system. The model predicts a nucleation rate that is slightly higher than the classical nucleation rate.