Direction of the steady state nucleation flux in the whole size space for binary systems

For steady state binary nucleation, the directions of the nucleation flux a nd the nucleation force are obtained in the whole size space. The derivatio n of the directions is made possible by introducing a local coordinate axis system along the streamlines of the nucleation-force vector and by employi ng the assumption of local uniformity for the direction of the streamlines. For an ideal hexanol-ethanol system, the results predicted by our theory a gree with the numerical results. For a specific nonideal system (PD2), our theory fails to apply to the region where our assumption is posteriorly inv alid. In this case it may be necessary to consider the variation of the dir ection of the force. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(99 )50910-0].