A thermodynamic criterion is developed to define the finest grain size that can be achieved during phase transformation, as a function of the driving force, interfacial energies and the parent phase grain size. It is found that at large undercoolings below the equilibrium temperature, the grain size achieved in practice is far greater than predicted theoretically. This is because of the heat of...

Abstract (Pb,Nb)(Zr,Sn,Ti)O3 antiferroelectric (AFE) thin films have been fabricated on LaNiO3/Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si wafers using a sol–gel process. The electric field-induced antiferroelectric-to-ferroelectric (AFE–FE) phase transformation behaviour and its dependence on the temperature were examined by investigating the dielectric constant and dielectric loss versus temperature and electrical field. ...

the influence of aluminium on the microstructure of austempered ductile cast iron (adi) has been studied. anumber of irons of different compositions have been made by green sand casting and gravity die casting ofappropriate design to provide the experimental materials. austenitising was carried out at different temperaturesand holding times for a variety of experimental irons to achieve suffici...

Solvent evaporation upon drying the precipitate was found to be the key factor for the phase transformation of cubic mesoporous silica SBA-1 to hexagonal SBA-3 studied by in-situ X-ray diffraction and 29Si solid state NMR on the precipitates formed various crystallisation conditions.

Here, we report that the postsynthesis nitridation of tungsten oxide nanowires can result in single crystal nitride nanowires when the initial diameters of the nanowires are less than 10 nm. For nanowires with diameters greater than 10 nm, the nitridation of nanowires resulted in polycrystalline but highly oriented tungsten nitride domains in nanowires. Partially nitrided nanowires show an epit...

Large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of nanoindentation on a (100) oriented silicon surface were performed to investigate the mechanical behavior and phase transformation of single crystalline silicon. The direct crystalline-to-amorphous transformation is observed during the nanoindentation with a spherical indenter as long as the applied indentation strain or load is large enough. This a...

Glass-like arrest has recently been reported in various magnetic materials. As in structural glasses, the kinetics of a first order transformation is arrested while retaining the higher entropy phase as a non-ergodic state. We show visual mesoscopic evidence of the irreversible transformation of the arrested antiferromagnetic-insulating phase in Pr(0.5)Ca(0.5)Mn(0.975)Al(0.025)O(3) to its equil...

A TEM study of pure tantalum and tantalum-tungsten alloys explosively shocked at a peak pressure of 30 GPa is presented. While no omega phase was found in shock-recovered pure Ta and Ta-5W which mainly contain a cellular dislocation structure, a shock-induced omega phase was found in Ta-10W which contains evenly distributed dislocations with a density higher than 1 × 10(12) cm( - 2). The shock-...