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Liquid–liquid structure transition and nucleation in undercooled Co-B eutectic alloys

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Abstract

Cyclic superheating and cooling were carried out for the undercooled hypereutectic Co80B20, eutectic Co81.5B18.5, and hypoeutectic Co83B17 alloys. For each alloy, there is a critical overheating temperature T ° c at which there is a sharp increase of the mean undercooling, i.e., below (above) T ° c , and the mean undercooling is about 80 °C (200 °C). DSC measurements show that there is a thermal absorption peak in the heating process, the peak temperature of which is nearly equal to the critical overheating temperature, indicating that the temperature-induced liquid–liquid structure transition does occur and should relate highly to nucleation in the undercooled Co-B eutectic melts. The effect of the liquid–liquid structure transition on nucleation was interpreted by the recent nucleation theory that considers the structures of overheated melts, and the composition-dependent overheating temperature was ascribed to the change of local favored structures. The present work provides further evidences for the liquid–liquid structure transition and is helpful for understanding solidification in undercooled melts.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51690163), the fund of the State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing in NWPU (No. 103-QP-2014), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 3102015ZY085), and the Program of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (No. B08040). The author Yixuan HE gratefully acknowledges financial support from the China Scholarship Council (CSC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, Shanxi, China

    Yixuan He, Jinshan Li, Jun Wang & Hongchao Kou

  2. Université Grenoble Alpes, LNCMI, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Yixuan He & Eric Beagunon

  3. CNRS, LNCMI, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Yixuan He & Eric Beagunon

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  1. Yixuan He
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Correspondence to Jinshan Li, Jun Wang or Eric Beagunon.

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He, Y., Li, J., Wang, J. et al. Liquid–liquid structure transition and nucleation in undercooled Co-B eutectic alloys. Appl. Phys. A 123, 391 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-017-0984-4

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