Crystal growth model with stress development and relaxation

¹  Department of Physics, University of Thessaloniki - 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece, EU
²  Institute for Physical Chemistry, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU
³  Otto-Schott-Institut, Universität Jena - 07743 Jena, Germany, EU

Corresponding author: panos@physics.auth.gr

Received: 6 May 2009
Accepted: 10 December 2009

Abstract

During crystallization of glass-forming melts an important amount of stress energy may develop. The reason for this development is the difference in volume of the new system and that in the ambient phase. Therefore, the growth rate decreases with time. Here we develop an algorithm for the process of crystallization using Monte Carlo simulation techniques that takes into account the stress energy. We find that there is a short period of initial fast growth stage followed by a second period of much slower growth, controlled by the relaxation rate. This picture has also been recently observed experimentally. Additionally, we find that during the growth process the shape of the crystal is changing. Although we start from a highly symmetric crystal with flat interfaces, a shape with a large number of facets is soon created.