KINETICS OF GRAIN NUCLEATION IN SUPERCOOLED QUASI-TWO-DIMENSIONAL Cu

Abstract

Grain nucleation kinetics of nanocrystalline Cu in a quasi-two-dimensional system was investigated using molecular dynamics. Nanoscale grains nucleate rapidly from supercooled Cu under isothermal annealing conditions. An Avrami exponent from the JMAK equation implies that the kinetics follows the continuous nucleation model. Observation of grain growth during the nucleation stage shows that the kinetics follows the classical grain growth model with a low growth exponent. The lower value of the exponent illustrates the rapid growth of grains during this stage. Using the growth exponent, the activation energy for nucleation in Cu was obtained and compared with the values obtained in earlier studies.