Nevertheless, in this Section, we focus on atomistically flat surfaces to set a reference point for more realistic systems studied in Section III C. When the interaction between gold slab and water molecules is strong, i.e., ε * = 1, nucleation occurs in the bulk liquid (see Figure (a)), similar to the homogeneous system. Minimum pressure (σ min ) sustained, denoted by black solid lines in Figure (c), is comparable to that obtained from our prior homogeneous simulations. On the contrary, when ε * = 0.5, nucleation occurs at the interface, as shown in Figure (b). Pressure-time curves also corroborate this finding -minimum pressure sustained by the system is significantly larger than σ min,bulk .