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Crystal Nucleation in Submicron Droplets of PureElements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
Abstract
Liquid-to-crystal nucleation has been studied extensively through dropletexperiments to locate examples of homogeneous nucleation. However, prior tothis work very few examples have been found, which implies that theexperiments have not been able to isolate heterogeneous nucleants in a smallpercentage of the droplets as is required. In this research,electrohydrodynamic atomization (EHD) is used to produce sub-Micron dropletsof pure elements that are largely free of heterogeneous nucleants.
Diffraction patterns of individual EHD-produced droplets are viewed todetermine the fraction of crystalline droplets produced as a function ofdroplet radius. These results are compared to theories for surface andvolume heterogeneous nucleation and for homophase nucleation. It is foundthat Si and Ge nucleate through either homogeneous nucleation or nucleationby homophase impurities. Nucleation results for vanadium and iron were notconclusive.
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- Copyright © Materials Research Society 1994
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