Simulation of the melting and crystallization processes in monocrystalline silicon exposed to nanosecond laser radiation

Numerical simulation of the melting and crystallization processes of monocrystalline silicon exposed to the nanosecond radiation of a ruby laser was carried out with the kinetics of the phase transformations accounted for on the basis of Kolmogorov equations. A two-dimensional mechanism of nucleation and growth of the new phase was invoked to describe the phase transitions. It was shown that the temporal dependences of monocrystal overheating and liquid phase supercooling in the melting and crystallization stages, respectively, are nonmonotonic and determined by the kinetics of the phase transitions. The maximum values of the overheating and supercooling were ∼100 K.