Many phase transformations are present in nature. A well-known example is the change in the aggregate state of water: the transition of water into ice, into steam and back. Minerals with an heterogeneous structure, often multicolored, for example, in agates, are also the result of phase transformations. Phase transitions are an integral part of metallurgy processes, the most famous example is steelmaking, and are also used in a number of technologies for production of new materials. To understand the process of phase transitions, it is important to be able to analyze the dynamics of interphase boundaries. Alexander Leonidovich Korzhenevsky, an IPMash RAS leading researcher, proposed a method that allows describing the motion of the interphase boundary by a nonlinear oscillator equation, which greatly simplifies the calculation.

The results of such research investigations are used in binary and three-component alloys, in solid-phase explosive crystallization of glasses and for describing the dynamics of the interphase boundary in a ferroelectric with a piezoelectric effect. The results of the research carried out by the scientists may be useful for the development of technologies for creating the materials with a given behavior in relation to a whole complex of mechanical, physical and chemical requirements, as a necessary preliminary theoretical calculation.

“In our work, we calculated the conditions under which it is possible to create superstructures with specified spatial impurity profiles of micron size in materials-products. This turned out to be possible because the calculation of the dynamics of the interphase boundary was described with good accuracy when solving an ordinary differential equation for a nonlinear oscillator with negative friction” – told Anastasiya Chevrychkina, senior researcher at the IPMash RASLaboratory of Micromechanics of Materials.

This method can be used as a preliminary calculation when creating new materials with a controlled heterogeneous structure.

The work was carried out within the framework of the project «Development of models for describing the propagating fronts of phase and chemical transformations in relation to the processes of deformation and destruction of structural elements in micro engineering applications», supported by the grant of the Russian Academy of Sciences No. 19-19-00552.