Nucleation is the local emergence of clusters (a few tens of nanometers) of a new phase within a mother phase. A crystal or a bubble within a solution for the cases which interest us. If nucleation is local, it is not localized: its stochastic nature prevents us from predicting where and when to look to observe the appearance and evolution of a population (whose number is not determinable) of nuclei. Our approaches aim at limiting the degrees of freedom of this stochastic aspect to allow its study, using for example confinement to limit the number of possible critical nuclei and improve their detection while keeping a statistical approach, or the sensitivity of nucleation to "inhomogeneities" to trigger nucleation (thus controlling its spatial and temporal localization) via the use of intense electric fields or localized mechanical constraints.
