Superheating in confined Pb(110) films

The melting behaviour of Pb film embedded in an Al matrix has been investigated by a molecular dynamics simulation technique. The Sutton-Chen potential for alloys has been employed to perform these calculations. Melting of a Pb(110) film has been studied by embedding it in Al(110) and Al(111). Melting is found to initiate at the film-host interface for the Al(110) host. However, a change in orientation of the film is observed before superheating when the film is embedded in the Al(111) matrix. The superheating determined by simulation is comparable with the value calculated by homogeneous theory. (author)