Screening effects during late stage phase separation

G.R. Carlow, S.Yu. Krylov and M. Zinke-Allmang

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1998, vol. 261, issue 1, 115-134

Abstract: Late stage phase separation is an important non-equilibrium thermodynamics process with a range of implications for applied systems such as thin film growth. A number of studies describe quantitatively Ostwald ripening, the dominant process under mass conservation. In these models the concept of a screening length occurs in different context, for three-dimensional systems to accommodate finite volume fractions of the minority phase, and for two-dimensional systems to circumvent the diverging steady state solution to the diffusion equation. We present a comprehensive review of this concept and show that the screening length in two- and three-dimensional systems has the same form if the average cluster radius and the average cluster cluster distance are used as parameters. In the experimental section, examples for two- and three-dimensional systems are given, showing that the screening length shields the interaction between clustering systems across a concentration step. This leads to sharper than expected interfaces between neighbouring ripening systems on a surface, and explains the resistance of sub-surface silicide clusters to dissolve into a uniform, buried film during annealing.

Keywords: Ostwald ripening; Cluster interactions; Open systems; Surface diffusion; Mesotaxy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:261:y:1998:i:1:p:115-134

DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(98)00366-5

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