Analysis on phase nucleation in Sn-Ni peritectic alloy combining confocal laser scanning in-situ observation and differential scanning calorimetry

Highlights: • Nucleation by these methods firstly in peritectic alloys containing IMCs. • The results by both the HT-CLSM and DSC show their consistence. • Dependence of ∆T on cooling rate is caused by concentration gradient. • Wetting angle for the heterogeneous nucleation are determined firstly. -- Abstract: The analysis of the phase nucleation requires not only the in-situ images but also the accurate nucleation information. Thus, the nucleation of both the primary Ni₃Sn₂ and peritectic Ni₃Sn₄ phases were studied during peritectic solidification of Sn-Ni alloy using the high temperature confocal laser scanning microscope (HT-CLSM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results by both methods confirm that the nucleation undercooling ∆T of the solid phases decrease with increasing cooling rates, which is demonstrated to be caused by higher concentration difference at larger cooling rates. Besides, the freezing range of the alloy is also found to decrease with the increase in cooling rate. However, the nucleation undercooling of the peritectic Ni₃Sn₄ phase determined by HT-CLSM is larger than that by DSC at each cooling rate. This is attributed to the slower capture of peritectic reaction when using HT-CLSM. Furthermore, the nucleation of peritectic Ni₃Sn₄ phase is confirmed to be controlled by the heterogeneous nucleation on primary Ni₃Sn₂ phase by comparison between the HT-CLSM observation and DSC result. In addition, the wetting angles for heterogeneous nucleation of both phases which are important parameters in analyzing the nucleation of solid phases were determined through the entropy of solidification data from the DSC results. The smaller wetting angle of peritectic Ni3Sn4 phase as compared with that of the primary Ni₃Sn₂ phase further proving the smaller nucleation undercooling of Ni3Sn4 phase during solidification.