Boiling of superheated liquids near the spinodal: I General theory

Abstract

Boiling of extremely superheated liquids will be discussed as critical phenomenon. A consistent description including the kinetics of the phase transition can be deduced from a variational principle. In contrast to classical nucleation theory, the spatial extension of critical nuclei increases with increasing superheating, but the energy needed to form a vapour nucleus decreases and vanishes at the spinodal. The boiling process exhibits an equivalence to a phase transition of second order and the appearing critical indices obey the corresponding scaling laws.