Specific mass increment and nonequilibrium crystal growth

Unsteady nonequilibrium crystallization of ammonium chloride from an aqueous solution resulting in the formation of irregular, so-called seaweed, structures is experimentally investigated. It is shown that specific increment of mass for the coexisting structures (or parts thereof) is the same and changes with time ( t ) according to the power law a / t − b , where the factor a = 1.87 ± 0.09 and the factor b is determined by the system relaxation time. The normalization of the power law to the total time of structure growth allows obtaining a universal law that describes the specific mass increment with time for both seaweed and dendrite structures (including the non-coexisting ones).