Book Description

One of the goals of materials science is to design alloys with pre-specified desirable technological properties. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying materials behavior. In particular, one must understand the effects on alloy properties caused by intentional changes in concentration and how the combinations of temperature, time and uncontrollable foreign impurities affect microstructure. In addition to the equilibrium phase information contained in phase diagrams, nonequilibrium dynamic processes and metastable phases are known to be crucial in determining materials properties. This volume brings together researchers working on various aspects of nonequilibrium processes in materials to discuss current research issues and to provide guidelines for future work. Particular attention was paid to understanding particle nucleation and growth, both experimentally and theoretically, solid-state reactions, nanosystems, liquid-solid transformations, and solidification and amorphization. On the theoretical side, fundamental principles governing nucleation and growth, and related phenomena such as coarsening and Ostwald ripening, are discussed. Progress is also reported on the phase field method and on Monte Carlo simulations.