Effect of melt quenching on metastable equilibrium diagrams

Abstract

The article investigates the influence of high cooling rates during quenching from the melt on the formation of metastable phases and the appearance of metastable equilibrium diagrams. It is shown that with increasing cooling rate, both an increase in the existence region of strongly supersaturated solid solutions and the formation of new metastable phases in binary Fe-P and Sb-Zn alloys are observed. Mechanisms of non-equilibrium crystallization during quenching from the melt are proposed, the influence of large supercooling under high cooling rate conditions on changes in the kinetics of occurring crystallization and the emerging competition during non-equilibrium crystallization of congruent and incongruent phases are demonstrated. The validity of the newly formed metastable phase in the Sb-Zn alloy is confirmed by the correctness of the dependencies of specific atomic volumes of equilibrium phases calculated using Vegard's approximation. The lattice parameters of the emerging stable and metastable phases in the alloys are calculated.