Spinodal decomposition in ternary alloys

Abstract

The Langer theory of spinodal decomposition in binary solutions is extended to the case of ternary alloys. A ternary master equation is obtained from which a system of diffusion equations in the Cahn-Hilliard approximation and equations of motion for the three independent partial structure functions are derived. The latter equations are presented with an approximation to various nonlinear terms and are expressed within the framework of the linear approximation due to Cook.