Observing in space and time the ephemeral nucleation of liquid-to-crystal phase transitions
Abstract
The phase transition of crystalline ordering is a general phenomenon, but its evolution in space and time requires microscopic probes for visualization. Here we report direct imaging of the transformation of amorphous titanium dioxide nanofilm, from the liquid state, passing through the nucleation step and finally to the ordered crystal phase. Single-pulse transient diffraction profiles at different times provide the structural transformation and the specific degree of crystallinity (η) in the evolution process. It is found that the temporal behaviour of η exhibits unique 'two-step' dynamics, with a robust 'plateau' that extends over a microsecond; the rate constants vary by two orders of magnitude. Such behaviour reflects the presence of intermediate structure(s) that are the precursor of the ordered crystal state. Theoretically, we extend the well-known Johnson–Mehl–Avrami–Kolmogorov equation, which describes the isothermal process with a stretched-exponential function, but here over the range of times covering the melt-to-crystal transformation.
Additional Information
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Received 08 July 2015. Accepted 14 September 2015. Published 19 October 2015. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in the Gordon and Betty Moore Center for Physical Biology at the California Institute of Technology. We thank Professor Harry Atwater and Naomi Coronel for their help in the preparation of specimens. Contributions: B.-K.Y., O.-H. K. and A.H.Z. conceived and designed the research; B.-K.Y., O.-H. K. and H. L. conducted experiments; J.T. performed theoretical modeling; B.-K.Y., J. T. and A.H.Z. wrote the article; and all authors have read and approved the final manuscript. The authors declare no competing financial interests.Attached Files
Published - ncomms9639.pdf
Supplemental Material - ncomms9639-s1.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC4667692
- Eprint ID
- 61550
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20151027-100714539
- NSF
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Created
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2015-10-27Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-05-19Created from EPrint's last_modified field