Premium
Experimental Evidence for the Development of Bimodal Grain Size Distributions by the Nucleation‐Limited Coarsening Mechanism
Author(s) -
Sano Tomoko,
Rohrer Gregory S.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1551-2916.2006.01327.x
Subject(s) - nucleation , grain size , materials science , transient (computer programming) , particle size distribution , distribution (mathematics) , chemical physics , particle size , thermodynamics , chemistry , mathematics , physics , composite material , mathematical analysis , computer science , operating system
It has recently been hypothesized that transient bimodal grain size distributions can arise from unimodal distributions during coarsening if the continued growth of a majority fraction of the crystals is arrested by the energy barrier to nucleate new layers. To test this hypothesis experimentally, SrTiO 3 has been coarsened in a titania‐rich liquid at 1500°C. Measurements of the grain size distribution as a function of time show a transient bimodal distribution that consists of a constant number of larger grains growing many times faster than a decreasing number of much smaller grains. The observations are consistent with the nucleation‐limited coarsening theory, which provides a plausible explanation for the development of transient bimodal grain size distributions in systems of crystals bounded by singular surfaces.