Zinc Crystal Growth in Microgravity

We report one of the first direct measurements of the efficiency of vapor-to-crystalline-solid growth in a microgravity environment aboard NASA's Reduced Gravity Research Facility. Zinc vapor is produced from a heater in a vacuum chamber containing argon gas. Vapor-phase nucleation is induced by cooling as the vapor expands away from the heat source, and its onset is easily detected visually by the appearance of a cloud of solid, crystalline zinc particles. The size distribution of these particles is monitored in situ by photon correlation spectroscopy. Samples were also extracted from the vapor for later analysis by scanning electron microscopy. The initial, rapid increase in the particle size distribution as a function of time is used to calculate the sticking efficiency for zinc atoms at growing crystal sites. Only a few of every 10⁵ zinc atoms that collide with the grain surfaces are incorporated into the growing crystals. If the large (>10 μm) graphite or SiC grains extracted from meteorites grow with comparable efficiency, then such materials could not have formed on timescales compatible with circumstellar outflows. However, these grains could have formed in equilibrium in stellar atmospheres prior to the initiation of the outflow.