Abstract
Systematic atomistic simulations of homo- and hetero-phase boundaries have been carried out to quantify interphase boundary energies in iron including δ-phase and γ-phase grain boundaries and δ/γ, δ/liquid and γ/liquid interfaces. Due to structural mismatch between body centered cubic (BCC) and face centered cubic (FCC) structures of the δ and γ phases, the minimum interface energy of the δ/γ interface is as high as 0.41 J/m2, much higher than the minimum interface energies of the δ/δ and γ/γ homo-phase interfaces, which are zero, suggesting that the high interface energy is one of the key factors that lead to the massive-like phase transformation from the δ phase to the γ phase observed by in situ radiography. Although the minimum δ/γ interface energy is not significantly higher than the δ/liquid interface energy that determines the δ nucleation upon solidification, it is yet high enough for the small entropy change upon the phase transformation to inhibit γ nucleation at a given critical radius until more than one orders of magnitude higher undercooling is achieved according to the classical theory of homogeneous nucleation.
