ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Unbiased atomistic insight in the competing nucleation mechanisms of methane hydrates.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 83 citations in OpenAlex.
- Bulk versus Interface Nucleation of COThe journal of physical chemistry. B · 2026Article
- Probing the critical nucleus size in tetrahydrofuran clathrate hydrate formation using surface-anchored nanoparticles.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Molecular Dynamics Study of Clathrate-like Ordering of Water in Supersaturated Methane Solution at Low Pressure.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Solubility of Methane in Water: Some Useful Results for Hydrate Nucleation.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2022Article
- Double Life of Methanol: Experimental Studies and Nonequilibrium Molecular-Dynamics Simulation of Methanol Effects on Methane-Hydrate Nucleation.The journal of physical chemistry. C, Nanomaterials and interfaces · 2022Article
- Reduced phase stability and faster formation/dissociation kinetics in confined methane hydrate.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Molecular Understanding of Homogeneous Nucleation of COThe journal of physical chemistry. B · 2021Article
- Rate Prediction for Homogeneous Nucleation of Methane Hydrate at Moderate Supersaturation Using Transition Interface Sampling.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Methane hydrates have important industrial and climate implications, yet their formation via homogeneous nucleation under natural, moderate conditions is poorly understood. Obtaining such understanding could lead to improved control of crystallization, as well as insight into polymorph selection in general, but is hampered by limited experimental resolution. Direct molecular dynamics simulations using atomistic force fields could provide such insight, but are not feasible for moderate undercooling, due to the rare event nature of nucleation. Instead, we harvest ensembles of the rare unbiased nucleation trajectories by employing transition path sampling. We find that with decreasing undercooling the mechanism shifts from amorphous to crystalline polymorph formation. At intermediate temperature the 2 mechanisms compete. Reaction coordinate analysis reveals the amount of a specific methane cage type is crucial for crystallization, while irrelevant for amorphous solids. Polymorph selection is thus governed by kinetic accessibility of the correct cage type and, moreover, occurs at precritical nucleus sizes, apparently against Ostwald's step rule. We argue that these results are still in line with classical nucleation theory. Our findings illuminate how selection between competing methane hydrate polymorphs occurs and might generalize to other hydrates and molecular crystal formation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.