Composition heterogeneity influence on the phase formation dynamics in the Al-Y melt

TL;DR

This paper models how composition heterogeneity affects phase formation dynamics in Al-Y melts, introducing a chemical potential concept for stoichiometry and analyzing instability development via the Cahn-Hilliard equation.

Contribution

It presents a new model describing slow diffusion dynamics and instability development in inhomogeneous Al-Y melts, linking composition heterogeneity to phase formation behavior.

Findings

Instability leads to spinodal decay in the melt.

Growth rate of fluctuations depends on model parameters.

Explains slow relaxation in melting glass-forming alloys.

Abstract

It is shown that at a description of a binary solution, in the presence of a liquid phase of variable composition and a stoichiometric solid phase, the concept of chemical potential can be introduced for stoichiometry, which qualitatively describes the dynamics of the re-distribution of the impurity at the contact of the phases. A model describing the slow dynamics of diffusion processes in an initially inhomogeneous sample is proposed. In the model under study, it is shown that the interaction of the impurity and the phase composition of the mixture, when deviating from equilibrium, leads to the development of instability, known as spinodal decay and mathematically described by the Cahn-Hilliard equation. Within the framework of this model system, a dispersion relation is constructed, from which the growth rate of unstable fluctuations from time is found and the influence of the model parameters on the instability value is investigated. The detected instability can explain the processes of slow non-monotonic relaxation that occurs when melting glass-forming metal alloys.