  Nucleation, the birth of a stable cluster from disorder, is inherently
stochastic. Yet up to date, there are no quantitative studies on NaCl
nucleation that accounts for its stochastic nature. Here, we report the first
stochastic treatment of NaCl-water nucleation kinetics. Using a recently
developed microfluidic system and evaporation model, our measured interfacial
energies extracted from a modified Poisson distribution of nucleation time show
an excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. Furthermore, analysis of
nucleation parameters in 0.5 pL, 1.5pL and 5.5 pL microdroplets reveals an
interesting interplay between kinetic confinement and shifting of nucleation
mechanisms. Overall, our findings highlight the need to treat nucleation
stochastically rather deterministically to bridge the gap between theory and
experiment.
