Beyond the "magic" sinter-resistant cluster sizes, we can use the competing pathways formalism to understand different types of sintering patterns. Figure suggests that Pt 2 and Pt 6 should have the same patterns of sintering; monomer movement from smaller to larger clusters involving Pt 2 and Pt 6 is very favorable, while the reverse is not. Thus, they can easily be consumed in the sintering process, and would not contribute to any suppression of overall sintering due favorability of the reverse sintering processes. Pt 3 and Pt 5 also share a similarity: both forward and reverse sintering are favorable, though forward sintering is more so. Thus, these clusters would tend to have a lower apparent driving force for sintering compared to Pt 2 and Pt 6 , as they both grow and shrink, passing through Pt 5 along the way, on average keeping the starting size of Pt 5 for longer. More details of Favoribility (in percent) of reverse sintering and ensemble sintering for each cluster size are in Fig. .