Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Use of lasers has increasingly been recognized as a promising tool for the spatiotemporal control of crystallization, which is required in various scientific and industrial fields. This work reports synergistic enhancement of crystal nucleation by spatially patterned multi-spot laser irradiation, which drastically improves crystallization efficiency from melt and solutions. We found that pulsed laser irradiation at two different spots with a certain separation distance could significantly enhance ice crystal nucleation in supercooled water, where no nucleation could be induced by single-spot irradiation with the doubled pulse energy. Furthermore, we revealed that not only the inter-spot distance but also the spatial geometry of laser-induced stimuli is critical for the enhancement of ice crystal nucleation, suggesting that multi-spot irradiation enhances nucleation by the synergistic interplay of multiple cavitation bubbles and/or pressure waves that were generated from different laser spots. Such crystal nucleation enhancement by multi-spot laser irradiation was also confirmed in a solution system. These results clearly indicate that crystallization probability is governed not simply by the total laser energy delivered to the solution but by its spatial distribution, which provides a practical design guideline for efficient spatially patterned laser-induced nucleation and mechanistic insight into precise crystallization control.
Source: ChemRxiv
Language: English
Subfield: Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
Field: Chemistry
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204764099