Abstract
It has been observed that the metals which exhibit anomalous diffusion behaviour are all allotropic in nature. A hypothesis to rationalise this interrelationship between the diffusion behaviour and the phase transformation characteristics is discussed here. This relationship arises from the correspondence between the saddle-point configuration of the diffusing atom and the structure of an allotrope of the matrix. Thus, in the embryonic form, the saddle-point configuration represents the structure of the matrix after the phase transformation. Several characteristics of the anomalous diffusion behaviour can be explained with the help of the present suggestion. Further, an estimate of the diffusion rates for several metals made on the basis yields satisfactory agreement with the experimental results.
