Ostwald ripening in two-phase mixtures

Experimental measurements of the temperature of a rapidly solidified solid-liquid mixture have been made over a range of volume fractions solid 0.23 to 0.95. These experiments demonstrate the viability of measuring the change in interfacial curvature with time via precision thermometry. The experimental measurements also indicate that there is no radical change in interface morphology over a wide range of volume fractions solid. A solution to the multi-particle diffusion problem (MDP) has been constructed through the use of potential theory. The solution to the MDP was used to describe the diffusion field within a coarsening two-phase mixture consisting of dispersed spherical second-phase particles. Since this theory is based upon the MDP, interparticle diffusional interactions are specifically included in the treatment. As a result, the theory yields, for the first time, insights into the influence of the local distribution of curvature on a particle's coarsening rate. The effect of interparticle interactions on the collective behavior of an ensemble of coarsening particles was also investigated. It was found that any arbitrary distribution of particle radii will tend to a specific time independent distribution when the particle radii are scaled by the average particle radius. Furthermore, it was determined that with increasing volume fraction of coarsening phase, these time independent distributions become broader and more symmetric. It was also found that the ripening kinetics, as measured by the growth rate of the average particle size, increases by a factor of five upon increasing the volume fraction of coarsening phase from zero to 0.5