Eliminating overgrowth effects in Poisson spatial process through the correlation among actual nuclei

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that accounting for spatial correlation among nuclei in Poisson processes eliminates overgrowth artifacts in phase transition modeling, extending the applicability of KJMA theory to diffusion-driven processes.

Contribution

It establishes the equivalence between standard KJMA solutions and correlated nucleation approaches, overcoming the phantom overgrowth limitation.

Findings

Correlation among nuclei removes overgrowth effects.

The approach applies to diffusion-controlled phase transitions.

KJMA theory's intrinsic limit is effectively overcome.

Abstract

It has been shown that the KJMA (Kolmogorov-Johnson-Mehl-Avrami) solution of phase transition kinetics can be set as a problem of correlated nucleation [Phys.Rev.B65, 172301 (2002)]. In this paper the equivalence between the standard solution and the approach that makes use of the actual nucleation rate, i.e. that takes into account spatial correlation among nuclei and/or grains, is shown by a direct calculation in case of linear growth and constant nucleation rate. As a consequence, the intrinsic limit of KJMA theory due to the phenomenon of phantom overgrowth is, at last, overcome. This means that thanks to this new approach it is possible, for instance, to describe phase transition governed by diffusion.