Cell dynamics approach to the formation of metastable phases during phase transformation

TL;DR

This study uses the cell dynamics method to explore how three-phase coexistence and metastable phases influence the growth and stability of nuclei during phase transformations in a two-dimensional system.

Contribution

It introduces a cell dynamics approach to analyze the growth of composite nuclei with metastable phases, revealing stable configurations that prevent phase transformation.

Findings

A stable core-surrounding phase configuration can prevent nucleus growth.

Metastable liquid phases can persist despite thermodynamic instability.

The results align with Cahn's kinetic theory of phase transition.

Abstract

In this paper, we use the cell dynamics method to study the dynamics of phase transformation when three phases exist. The system we study is a two-dimensional system. The system is able to achieve three phases coexistence, which for simplicity we call crystal, liquid and vapor phases. We focus our study on the case when the vapor and crystal phases are stable and can coexist while the other intermediate liquid phase is metastable. In this study we examine the most fundamental process of the growth of a composite nucleus which consists of a circular core of one phase surrounded by a circular layer of second phase embedded in a third phase. We found that there is one special configuration that consists of a core stable phase surrounded by another stable phase in a metastable liquid environment which becomes stationary and stable. Then, the nucleus does not grow and the metastable liquid survives. The macroscopic liquid phase does not disappear even though it is thermodynamically metastable. This result seems compatible to the argument of kinetics of phase transition developed by Cahn [J. Am. Ceram. Soc. {\bf 52}, 118 (1969)] based on the construction of a common tangent of the free energy curve.