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Updated: May 25, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Can the crystallization rate be independent from the crystallization enthalpy? The case of amorphous silicon
1GRMT, Department of Physics, University of Girona, Montilivi Campus, E17071-Girona, Catalonia, Spain.
Abstract:
The crystallization enthalpy measured in a large series of amorphous silicon (a-Si) materials varies within a factor of 2 from sample to sample (Kail et al 2011 Phys. Status Solidi RRL 5 361). According to the classical theory of nucleation, this variation should produce large differences in the crystallization kinetics leading to crystallization temperatures and activation energies exceeding 550 °C and 1.7 eV, respectively, the 'standard' values measured for a-Si obtained by self-implantation. In contrast, the observed crystallization kinetics is very similar for all the samples studied and has no correlation with the crystallization enthalpy. This discrepancy has led us to propose that crystallization in a-Si begins in microscopic domains that are almost identical in all samples, independently of their crystallization enthalpy. Probably the existence of microscopic inhomogeneities also plays a crucial role in the crystallization kinetics of other amorphous materials and glasses.
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