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From chessboard tweed to chessboard nanowire structure during pseudospinodal decomposition

Nature Materials volume 8, pages 410–414 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Microstructure evolution in complex nonlinear systems is of great interest from both scientific and engineering viewpoints. Here, we consider an important case of such an evolution, a coherent decomposition of a homogeneous parent phase involving the symmetry-lifting crystal lattice rearrangement of the product phase. It is shown that under certain conditions the transformation develops as a pseudospinodal decomposition, which is defined as a transformation with continuous changes of the compositions of both decomposed phases towards their equilibrium values. The pseudospinodal decomposition starts by the formation of a nanodomain precursor state with a so-called tweed structure. The three-dimensional modelling demonstrates that this tweed structure has an underlying chessboard feature, and this arrangement is a template for the further microstructure development that eventually produces a coherent two-phase chessboard nanowire pattern. The proposed theory and modelling describe the mechanism of the pseudospinodal decomposition and predict all observed three-dimensional features of the chessboard structure.

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Figure 1: Architecture of 3D chessboard nanostructures.
Figure 2
Figure 3: Histograms of the distribution of volume fractions of finite elements with different compositions, c, at different times.
Figure 4: Simulated 3D microstructure development.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from NSF DMR under the grant NSF DMR-0704045. The simulations were performed on the DataStar in the San Diego Supercomputer Centre.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Rutgers University, 607 Taylor Road, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA

    Yong Ni & Armen G. Khachaturyan

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  1. Yong Ni
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  2. Armen G. Khachaturyan
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Contributions

Y.N. carried out most of the analysis and simulation in the research. A.G.K. planned the research and supervized it. The article was written by A.G.K. and Y.N.

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Correspondence to Armen G. Khachaturyan.

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Ni, Y., Khachaturyan, A. From chessboard tweed to chessboard nanowire structure during pseudospinodal decomposition. Nature Mater 8, 410–414 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2431

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