| It is well known, that the mechanical material properties of a material sample after solidification are strongly tied to its microstructure structure. Nevertheless, the precise laws governing the initial stage of this structuring process, i.e. nucleation and the successive transiental microstructure evolution scenario's, are still for from being fully understood. Here we show, that the phase field method, which originally established itself to tackle the free boundary problem given by microstructure evolution, can also be employed to investigate the energetics of heterogenous nucleation in a solidifying sample. Moreover it is demonstrated, how the phasefield crystal method can shade more light in open questions regarding a quantitative formulation of nucleation statistics to thereby simulate the phase transition phenomena in solidification from nucleation to crystallization in larger domains thoroughly. |
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