What's the difference between nucleation and synthesis?
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Answer:
Nucleation:-
Nucleation is the first step in the formation of either a new thermodynamic phase or a new structure via self-assembly or self-organization. Nucleation is typically defined to be the process that determines how long an observer has to wait before the new phase or self-organized structure appears. For example, if a volume of water is cooled (at atmospheric pressure) below 0° C, it will tend to freeze into ice. Volumes of water cooled only a few degrees below 0° C often stay completely free of ice for long periods. At these conditions, nucleation of ice is either slow or does not occur at all. However, at lower temperatures ice crystals appear after little or no delay. At these conditions ice nucleation is fast.Nucleation is commonly how first-order phase transitions start, and then it is the start of the process of forming a new thermodynamic phase. In contrast, new phases at continuous phase transitions start to form immediately.
Nucleation is often found to be very sensitive to impurities in the system. These impurities may be too small to be seen by the naked eye, but still can control the rate of nucleation. Because of this, it is often important to distinguish between heterogeneous nucleation and homogeneous nucleation. Heterogeneous nucleation occurs at nucleation sites on surfaces in the system.Homogeneous nucleation occurs away from a surface.
Synthesis:-
Chemical synthesis, the construction of complex chemical compounds from simpler ones. It is the process by which many substances important to daily life are obtained. It is applied to all types of chemical compounds, but most syntheses are of organic molecules.
Chemists synthesize chemical compounds that occur in nature in order to gain a better understanding of their structures. Synthesis also enables chemists to produce compounds that do not form naturally for research purposes. In industry, synthesis is used to make products in large quantity.
Chemical compounds are made up of atoms of different elements, joined together by chemical bonds. A chemical synthesis usually involves the breaking of existing bonds and the formation of new ones. Synthesis of a complex molecule may involve a considerable number of individual reactions leading in sequence from available starting materials to the desired end product. Each step usually involves reaction at only one chemical bond in the molecule.
In planning the route of chemical synthesis, chemists usually visualize the end product and work backward toward increasingly simpler compounds. For many compounds, it is possible to establish alternative synthetic routes. The ones actually used depend on many factors, such as cost and availability of starting materials, the amount of energy needed to make the reaction proceed at a satisfactory rate, and the cost of separating and purifying the end products. Moreover, knowledge of the reaction mechanism and the function of the chemical structure (or behaviour of the functional groups) helps to accurately determine the most-favoured pathway that leads to the desired reaction product.
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