Spontaneous Liquefaction of Solid Metal-Liquid Metal Interfaces in Colloidal Binary Alloys

CJ Parker and K Zuraiqi and V Krishnamurthi and EL Mayes and PHA Vaillant and SS Fatima and K Matuszek and JB Tang and K Kalantar-Zadeh and N Meftahi and CF Mcconville and A Elbourne and SP Russo and AJ Christofferson and K Chiang and T Daeneke, ADVANCED SCIENCE, 11 (2024).

DOI: 10.1002/advs.202400147

Crystallization of alloys from a molten state is a fundamental process underpinning metallurgy. Here the direct imaging of an intermetallic precipitation reaction at equilibrium in a liquid-metal environment is demonstrated. It is shown that the outer layers of a solidified intermetallic are surprisingly unstable to the depths of several nanometers, fluctuating between a crystalline and a liquid state. This effect, referred to herein as crystal interface liquefaction, is observed at remarkably low temperatures and results in highly unstable crystal interfaces at temperatures exceeding 200 K below the bulk melting point of the solid. In general, any liquefaction process would occur at or close to the formal melting point of a solid, thus differentiating the observed liquefaction phenomenon from other processes such as surface pre-melting or conventional bulk melting. Crystal interface liquefaction is observed in a variety of binary alloy systems and as such, the findings may impact the understanding of crystallization and solidification processes in metallic systems and alloys more generally.

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