Density functional theory of heterogeneous crystallization

Abstract

This mini-review summarizes recent progress in describing heterogeneous crystallization processes and microstructure formation within microscopic classical density functional theory (DFT). After outlining the basic features of DFT, we discuss several applications ranging from the structure and thermodynamics of fluid-crystal interfaces for hard sphere and Yukawa systems to dynamical phenomena such as crystal growth on structured substrates and induced by externally imposed seeds.