Materials Chemistry and Physics, Vol.153, 93-102, 2015
Dynamic evolution of liquid-liquid phase separation during continuous cooling
Solidification from a multiphase fluid involves many unknown quantities due to the difficulty of predicting the impact of fluid flow on chemical partitioning. Real-time x-ray radiography has been used to observe liquid liquid phase separation in Al90In10 prior to solidification. Quantitative image analysis has been used to measure the motion and population characteristics of the dispersed indium-rich liquid phase during cooling. Here we determine that the droplet growth characteristics resemble well known steady-state coarsening laws with likely enhancement by concurrent growth due to supersaturation. Simplistic views of droplet motion are found to be insufficient until late in the reaction due to a hydrodynamic instability caused by the large density difference between the dispersed and matrix liquid phases. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.