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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Mar 23.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Biol. 2016 Jan 14;26(3):277–285. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.11.065

Figure 1. Nucleation and growth in phase separation processes.

Figure 1

Birth of a new phase is called nucleation. Smaller size assemblies are unstable due to their large surface to volume ratio, which increases the negative effect of surface tension. Therefore, smaller assemblies shrink rather than grow. However, if the assemblies reach a critical size, they will readily grow. If the nucleation barrier is large, then the formation of new assembly becomes nucleation-limited. Otherwise, this process becomes growth limited.