Nucleation kinetics of a solid phase in supercooled melts or liquids under heat-insulating conditions (The Initial Stage)

The initial stage of decomposition of a supercooled melt or a viscous liquid under heat-insulating conditions has been considered in terms of the method of virtual media. The heat removal from the interface is taken as the controlling process in the vicinity of a growing nucleus. In addition to the quasi-steady-state equations (which already became standard) for the nucleation rate and the distribution function of subcritical particles of a new phase, an estimating equation has been derived for the time required to reach steady-state values of these characteristics. Numerical evaluations have been performed for nickel. It has been demonstrated that the chosen model of the controlling process is valid only under the condition of weak heat removal. Attention has been drawn to the difference between the “diffusion” and “thermal” processes of nucleation.