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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Phase-field-crystal calculation of crystal-melt surface tension in binary alloys
Nikolas Provatas1, Sami Majaniemi
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4L7. provata@mcmaster.ca
Abstract:
A phase field crystal (PFC) density functional for binary mixtures is coarse grained and a formalism for calculating the simultaneous concentration, temperature, and density dependence of the surface energy anisotropy of a solid-liquid interface is developed. The methodology systematically relates bulk free energy coefficients arising from coarse graining to thermodynamic data, while gradient energy coefficients are related to molecular properties. Our coarse-grained formalism is applied to the determination of surface energy anisotropy in two-dimensional Zn-Al films, a situation relevant for quantitative phase field simulations of dendritic solidification in zinc coatings.
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