Density functional theory is applied to ion-induced nucleation of polarizable multipolar molecules. The asymmetric nature of the ion-molecule interaction is shown to cause the sign preference in ion-induced nucleation. When the ion-molecule interaction is weak, the observed sign preference is consistent with that of the bare ion-molecule interaction potential and decreases with increasing supersaturation. However, as the ion-molecule interaction becomes stronger, the sign preference in the reversible work exhibits some nontrivial behavior. For molecular parameters applicable for CS2 and CH4, the predicted values of the reversible work of nucleation depend on the sign of the ion charge, yielding a difference in the nucleation rate by factors of 10 to 10(2) and 10 to 10(5), respectively. (C) 1995 American Institute of Physics. [References: 32]
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