Isothermal nanocrystallization kinetics during polymorphic transformation

Abstract

The experimental value of Avrami exponent during polymorphic nanocrystallization deviates from the theoretical prediction of the Kolmogorov-Johnson-Mehl-Avrami (KJMA) isothermal kinetics. The assumption of negligible nuclei volume, implicit in KJMA, is violated for all such transformations involving nano-sized grains. A discrete adaptation of the KJMA model is used to study the effect of the non-zero nuclei volume on nanocrystallization kinetics. Transformations initiated by homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation are analyzed under constant nucleation and growth rate conditions. For homogeneous nucleation, a universal scaling relation with respect to finite nuclei size is found. In contrast to this, for the heterogeneous case a series of linear scaling relations are observed with respect to the nucleation conditions. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.