LaMer Burst Nucleation -- A Graphical Interpretation of Microscopic Parameters from Macroscopic Measurements

LaMer burst nucleation enables the production of monodisperse nanoparticles, such as quantum dots. This paper applies the Chu-Owen-Peters (COP) model of LaMer burst nucleation to the original sulfur sol data from Zaiser and LaMer and to CdS nanocrystal data from Owen and co-workers. I present a graphical interpretation to obtain critical nucleus size and growth rate from the dependence of total nuclei (produced in a burst event) on the solute supply rate. The sulfur sol data follows a linear relationship, such as that observed by Sugimoto and co-workers, but the COP model provides further information which puts a bound on the maximum critical nucleus size. Trends in the CdS data, which cannot be explained by a linear model, align well with the COP model. While more data would be necessary to determine the critical nucleus size precisely, we find a minimum bound on the critical nucleus size and a maximum bound on the attachment frequency at the peak of saturation. Finally, we demonstrate that such macroscopic information is sufficient to test theoretical models of nucleation kinetics by comparing the sulfur sol results to classical nucleation theory.