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Pattern Formation in Materials Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2013

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The growth of materials at interfaces frequently leads to patterns with length scales that can be much larger than atomic sizes. Patterns resulting from morphological instabilities occur during crystal growth and are responsible for the intricate shapes of snowflakes, dendritic crystals, and the like. They also occur during the electrochemical deposition of metals on surfaces, and during the growth of thin films by vapor deposition. Our purpose is to point out some particularly interesting connections that have come to be appreciated during the past five years between different types of pattern-forming phenomena, and to summarize some recent theoretical approaches to understanding them.

The phenomenon of dendritic crystal growth, though studied for many years, is still a great challenge. As an example, we show the development of a needle crystal of ammonium bromide (NH4Br) from supersaturated aqueous solution in Figure 1. The contours are cross sections of the interface at 20-second intervals, obtained by digital image analysis. One can see that an approximately parabolic tip translates at constant speed, and that the needle crystal is apparently unstable to the development of a train of sidebranches that propagate outward from the main stem but do not move forward with the tip.

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Technical Feature
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1987

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