Abstract Scope |
I have been a serial co-author/co-editor of symposia proceedings with Carl Thompson. These interactions have focused on kinetic issues: crystal nucleation, interdiffusion and electromigration, predominantly in rapidly quenched metallic glasses, and in PVD thin films and multilayers. This talk is on recent work in these areas, highlighting aspects that build directly on, or (however different) were inspired by, Thompson’s work. On crystal nucleation, the work ranges over critical-radius values from nanometres to micrometres. Seeding nuclei in a metallic glass can enable it to reach the holy grail of showing strain-hardening and therefore ductility; inoculation in Al alloys is vital for control of grain size. Classical nucleation theory can be used to interpret switching times in chalcogenide phase-change memory. Interdiffusion in multilayered metallic glasses enables studies of Kirkendall voiding down to nm dimensions. Electromigration can be used to investigate and to control (accelerate and reverse) intermetallic formation at metal-metal interfaces. |