Howard Reiss is supported by a grant from the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry program to continue his theoretical research in the area of vapor-phase nucleation. He will extend and improve his "modified liquid drop model" for nucleation in several ways in an attempt to develop a fully molecular rate theory for this important process. Although the theory has provided excellent agreement with experimental data on nucleation of Argon, it needs to be extended to more complex systems for further verification. Reiss will develop a suitable intermolecular potential for treating carbon tetrachloride which will provide a more challenging test of the theory. Computer simulations using Monte Carlo methods will accompany the theoretical developments, and attempts will be made to improve existing density functional theories for nucleation which have been developed by others. Nucleation is an extremely important physical process which has implications in the area of weather modification and environmental remediation. At the current time there is no fully molecular "first principles" theory for predicting the rate of such processes. The research being performed by Reiss is a first and significant step in the direction of such a theoretical development.
