The heterogeneous nucleation behaviors of NH4Cl crystal on rough aluminum substrate surface immerged in NH4Cl-H2O solution were experimentally analyzed, and the influence mechanism of the micro/nano-scale surface structures on heterogeneous nucleation was investigated. It has been shown that wettability and nucleation are affected by substrate surface condition. The intrinsic wetting properties between nucleus and substrate surface, and the surface structure of certain geometrical scales, both impose effects on the heterogeneous nucleation properties. For a nucleus-wetting substrate surface, heterogeneous nucleation is promoted by a higher complexity of the surface morphology; but for a nucleus-nonwetting substrate surface, heterogeneous nucleation is inhibited by a higher complexity of the surface morphology.
Crystal orientation influences the morphological stability of solid–liquid interface during directional solidification of alloy, resulting in the variation of solidified microstructure. In this paper, the morphological evolution near grain boundary grooves（GBGs） with different crystal orientations in a dilute succinonitrile alloy under low temperature gradient and interface velocity is observed in situ. Under experimental conditions, the macroscopic solid–liquid interface is planar and keeps stable, while in GBGs there emerge protrusion and undulation. It is found that the morphological stability of GBG is dependent on crystal orientation. Specifically, for succinonitrile with a body-centered cubic crystal structure, GBGs around the 100 crystal orientation keep stable, while those apart from the 100 crystal orientation become unstable under the same conditions. So it is concluded that 100 crystal orientation favors the morphological stability of GBG.
The history of development and current situation of the theoretical description and numerical modeling of the solidification process are reviewed.The status and problems of the related research are discussed,with the main focus being on the solidification theories associated with microstructure formation and the concurrent macro-/microcoupling methods used to simulate solidification.Furthermore,the development trends of the theoretical description and numerical modeling of solidification are discussed.
