Abstract
Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the techniques for the measurement and analysis of crystal nucleation in supercooled liquids, focusing on metallic liquids. Representative maximum-supercooling and nucleation data are also presented. To observe homogeneous nucleation effects, suppression of heterogeneous nucleation is essential. Early studies attempted to isolate the heterogeneous sites by dividing the liquids into large ensembles of essentially isolated droplets. This allowed studies of the ultimate supercooling to be made, probing the homogeneous nucleation limit. Most liquids can be supercooled from 10 to 30% of their melting temperatures before crystallizing, indicating a significant nucleation barrier. This is unexpected for metals, because the densities and coordination numbers of the liquid and solid are similar. To explain this, it was hypothesized that the liquid develops icosahedral short-range order with supercooling. This connection between the nucleation barrier and the developing structure of the liquid is proven by correlating the preferential nucleation of a metastable icosahedral quasicrystal with icosahedral short-range order in the liquid.
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