Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41615744›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026

The role of fluctuations in the nucleation process.

Yuanpeng Deng, Peilin Kang, Xiang Xu, Hui Li, Michele Parrinello

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. A computational microscope for fluctuations: Bringing crystal nucleation into focus.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  4. Committors without Descriptors.Journal of chemical theory and computation · 2026
    Article
  5. Coarse-Graining Self-Assembly by the Stochastic Landscape Method.Journal of chemical theory and computation · 2025
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Yuanpeng DengKey Lab of Smart Prevention and Mitigation of Civil Engineering Disasters of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Key Lab of Structures Dynamic Behavior and Control of the Ministry of Education, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China.ORCID 0009-0005-2554-9491
Peilin KangAtomistic Simulations, Italian Institute of Technology, Genova 16156, Italy.
Xiang XuKey Lab of Smart Prevention and Mitigation of Civil Engineering Disasters of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Key Lab of Structures Dynamic Behavior and Control of the Ministry of Education, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China.
Hui LiKey Lab of Smart Prevention and Mitigation of Civil Engineering Disasters of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Key Lab of Structures Dynamic Behavior and Control of the Ministry of Education, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China.
Michele ParrinelloAtomistic Simulations, Italian Institute of Technology, Genova 16156, Italy.ORCID 0000-0001-6550-3272

Funding

MOST | National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) 51921006MOST | National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) 52192661MOST | National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) 52322803
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The emergence upon cooling of an ordered solid phase from a disordered liquid is a remarkable example of self-assembly, which has also major practical relevance. Here, we use a recently developed committor-based enhanced sampling method to explore the crystallization transition in a Lennard-Jones fluid, using variational principle based on the backward Kolmogorov equation. We exploit the unique properties of our method to study in detail the nucleation mechanism, allowing us to detect and analyze the fluctuations that eventually lead to crystallization. We find that the transition state ensemble has a complex nature in which the nonspherical solid core is surrounded by an interface that is more disordered than bulk liquid. We also compute from the variational principle a nucleation rate that is consistent with the experimental results at variance with previous estimates.

Indexed as

enhanced samplingmolecular dynamicsnucleationtransition state

Identifiers

PMID41615744
PMCPMC12867740

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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.