English

Dynamics of Low Anisotropy Morphologies in Directional Solidification

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-07 v1 Materials Science Pattern Formation and Solitons

Abstract

We report experimental results on quasi-two-dimensional diffusion limited growth in directionally solidified succinonitrile with small amounts of poly(ethylene oxide), acetone, or camphor as a solute. Seaweed growth, or dense branching morphology, is selected by growing grains close to the {111}\{111\} plane, where the in-plane surface tension is nearly isotropic. The observed growth morphologies are very sensitive to small anisotropies in surface tension caused by misorientations from the {111}\{111\} plane. Different seaweed morphologies are found, including the degenerate, the stabilized, and the strongly tilted seaweeds. The degenerate seaweeds show a limited fractal scaling range and, with increased undercooling, suggests a transition from "fractal" to "compact" seaweed. Strongly tilted seaweeds demonstrate a significant twofold anisotropy. In addition, seaweed-dendrite transitions are observed in low anisotropy growth.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0206179,
  title  = {Dynamics of Low Anisotropy Morphologies in Directional Solidification},
  author = {B. Utter and E. Bodenschatz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0206179},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

12 pages, 17 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. E, reduced image quality for smaller file size

R2 v1 2026-07-22T10:37:55.037Z