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Trans-interface diffusion-controlled coarsening

Nature Materials volume 4, pages 309–316 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Accurate theoretical predictions of the volume-fraction dependence during diffusion-controlled coarsening of a polydisperse assembly of particles have proved difficult. Here, a new model of coarsening is presented, involving diffusive transport through the coherent interface between ordered and disordered phases, which atomistic calculations show has a ragged structure. The interface is a diffusion bottleneck when the ordered phase is dispersed. It is predicted that the square of the average radius grows linearly with time, that the depletion of solute decreases as the inverse square-root of time, and that there is no effect of volume fraction on kinetics and the scaled particle-size distributions. These differ dramatically from predictions of modern theories of diffusion-controlled coarsening. Data on coarsening in Ni-Al alloys is examined. We show that no other theory is consistent with the experimentally observed absence of an effect of volume fraction on coarsening of ordered γ′ (Ni3Al) precipitates in a disordered Ni-Al (γ) matrix, and the strong volume-fraction dependence of coarsening of γ precipitates in an ordered γ′ matrix.

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Figure 1: Volume fraction effect on the rate constant k(ƒe) for coarsening of coherent precipitates.
Figure 2: Snapshot and equilibrium composition of the γ/γ′ interface.
Figure 3: Model of the non-equilibrium composition profile around a growing γ′ precipitate of radius r > r* (solid curve) in the new theory.
Figure 4: Data of Ardell and Nicholson7.
Figure 5: The scaled particle size distributions for the data of Ardell and Nicholson7, compared with the predictions of the LSW1,2 and TIDC coarsening theories.
Figure 6: The data of Ardell31 on the kinetics of solute depletion.
Figure 7

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Acknowledgements

We benefited from helpful discussions with Mark Asta. A.J.A. is grateful to the National Science Foundation for financial support of this research under Grant DMR-0209260. V.O. was supported by the MARCO Focus Center for Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics (FENA) and by the National Science Foundation under Grant DMR-0427638.

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  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, 90095-1595, California, USA

    Alan J. Ardell & Vidvuds Ozolins

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Correspondence to Alan J. Ardell or Vidvuds Ozolins.

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Ardell, A., Ozolins, V. Trans-interface diffusion-controlled coarsening. Nature Mater 4, 309–316 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1340

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