Formation and evolution mechanisms of large-clusters during rapid solidification process of liquid metal Al

Formation and Evolution Characteristics of Nano-Clusters (For Large-Scale Systems of 106 Liquid Metal Atoms)

“…On the whole, these simulation results are rather close to those obtained in our previous works on different-sized liquid metal systems (Liu R. S., et al, 1998(Liu R. S., et al, , 1999(Liu R. S., et al, , 2005a(Liu R. S., et al, , 2005bDong K. J., et al, 2003) ; that is to say, for different-sized liquid metal systems, the simulation results of relative numbers of corresponding bond-types are similar to each other, there being only a minor difference during solidification processes.…”

“…The theoretical works were mainly carried out on diversified individual clusters configured by accumulating atoms according to some fixed pattern (Liu C. S. et al, 2001;Solov'yov et al, 2003;Doye & Meyer, 2005;Li H. & Pederiva, 2003;Ikeshoji et al, 1996;Wang L et al, 2002;Haberland et al, 2005;Joshi et al, 2006;Noya et al, 2007;Cabarcos et al, 1999;Orlando & James, 1999;Alfe, 2003). However, it is interesting that the similar clusters or aggregations have been found in some liquid metals during rapid solidification processes in our MD simulations ( Liu R. S. et al, 1992a( Liu R. S. et al, , 1992b( Liu R. S. et al, , 1995( Liu R. S. et al, , 2005a( Liu R. S. et al, , 2005b( Liu R. S. et al, , 2007a( Liu R. S. et al, , 2007b( Liu R. S. et al, , 2007cDong K. J. et al, 2003;Liu F. X. et al, 2009;Hou Z. Y. et al, 2009Hou Z. Y. et al, , 2010aHou Z. Y. et al, , 2010b and that it is also important for understanding in depth the solidification processes from liquid state to solid state. Furthermore, the formation and evolution characteristics of cluster configurations, especially the nano-cluster configurations, formed during solidification processes of liquid metals are still not well known up to now.…”

“…On this point, at present it is hard to use the bond-type index method to describe clearly the cluster configurations of different types. In order to deal with this difficult matter, a cluster-type index method (CTIM) has been proposed (Liu R. S., et al, 1998(Liu R. S., et al, , 1999(Liu R. S., et al, , 2005a(Liu R. S., et al, , 2005bDong K. J., et al, 2003) based on the HA indexes (Honeycutt & Andersen, 1987) and the work of Qi and Wang (Qi. & Wang, S., 1991b).…”

Formation and magic number characteristics of clusters formed during solidification processes

“…The theoretical works are mainly carried out on various cluster configurations formed by accumulating atoms according to different patterns [11][12][13][14][15][16]. However, another kind of similar cluster configuration which has been found in some liquid metals during their rapid solidification processes [17][18][19][20][21] is also important for understanding in depth the solidification processes from liquid state to solid state. As we know, whether in experimental or theoretical studies, the formation mechanisms and magic number characteristics of cluster configurations, especially of larger cluster configurations, formed during solidification processes in liquid metals are still not well understood up to now.…”

“…The main purpose of this paper is to reveal the formation mechanisms and magic number characteristics of cluster configurations, especially of larger cluster configurations, formed during solidification processes in liquid metals. With this aim, based on our previous works [17][18][19][20][21], a tracking simulation study on the rapid solidification processes of a system consisting of 10 6 liquid metal Al atoms has been performed by using a molecular dynamics method, centre-atom method [17] and cluster-type index method [19,20], and some new results have been obtained.…”