Phase field study of precipitate growth: Effect of misfit strain and interface curvature

We have studied diffusion controlled growth of an isolated, misfitting precipitate in a supersaturated matrix using a phase field model. Treating our simulations as computer experiments, we have critically compared our simulation results with those from Zener-Frank and Laraia-Johnson theories for the growth of non-misfitting and misfitting precipitates, respectively. The agreement between simulations and the ZF theory is very good for 1D systems. In 2D systems with interfacial curvature, we still get good agreement between simulations and both ZF and LJ theories, but only for large supersaturations. At small supersaturations, the growth coefficient from our simulations does converge towards that from theory, but a large gap does remain when the simulations end due to overlap of diffusion fields. An interesting finding from the simulations is the less complete realization of the Gibbs-Thomson effect during growth, particularly in more supersaturated alloys. Thus, even at the same precipitate size, the curvature effects are less severe in more supersaturated alloys.