Thermal and chemical diffusion in the rapid solidification of binary alloys

Solidification of binary alloys is characterized by the necessity to reject away from the advancing front two conserved quantities: the latent heat released at the solid-liquid interface and the solute atoms that cannot be accommodated in the solid phase. As thermal diffusion is much faster than chemical diffusion, the latter is generally assumed to be the rate limiting mechanism for the process, and the problem is addressed through the isothermal approximation. In the present paper we use the phase-field model to study the planar growth of a solid germ, nucleated in its undercooled melt. We focus on the effects of a noninstantaneous thermal relaxation. The steady growth predicted at large supersaturation in the isothermal limit is prevented. Depending on the value of the Lewis number the growth rate is limited by either mass or heat diffusion; in the latter case we observe a sharp transition between two different regimes, in which originates a nonmonotonic time dependence of the interface temperature. The effects of this transition reflect in the composition of the solidified alloy.