Preferential Nucleation during Polymorphic Transformations

Polymorphism is the ability of a solid material to exist in more than one phase or crystal structure. Polymorphism may occur in metals, alloys, ceramics, minerals, polymers, and pharmaceutical substances. Unresolved are the conditions for preferential nucleation during polymorphic transformations in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2016-08, Vol.6 (1), p.30860-30860, Article 30860
Main Authors: Sharma, H., Sietsma, J., Offerman, S. E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/154/433
639/301/1023/1026
639/638/263/915
704/2151/213/536
Alloys
Ceramics
Crystal structure
Humanities and Social Sciences
MATERIALS SCIENCE
Metals
metals and alloys
Minerals
multidisciplinary
Nucleation
Nuclei
pharmaceutics
Polymers
Science
solid-state chemistry
structural geology
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Description
Summary:Polymorphism is the ability of a solid material to exist in more than one phase or crystal structure. Polymorphism may occur in metals, alloys, ceramics, minerals, polymers, and pharmaceutical substances. Unresolved are the conditions for preferential nucleation during polymorphic transformations in which structural relationships or special crystallographic orientation relationships (OR’s) form between the nucleus and surrounding matrix grains. We measured in-situ and simultaneously the nucleation rates of grains that have zero, one, two, three and four special OR’s with the surrounding parent grains. These experiments show a trend in which the activation energy for nucleation becomes smaller – and therefore nucleation more probable - with increasing number of special OR’s. These insights contribute to steering the processing of polymorphic materials with tailored properties, since preferential nucleation affects which crystal structure forms, the average grain size and texture of the material, and thereby - to a large extent - the final properties of the material.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep30860