Homogeneous crystal nucleation in binary metallic melts

A method for calculating the homogeneous crystal nucleation frequency in binary metallic melts is developed. The free energy of crystallization is derived from regular solution models for the liquid and solid and used with model-based estimates of the interfacial tension to calculate the nucleation frequency from classical theory. The method can account for the composition dependence of maximum undercooling observed in experiments on small droplet dispersions. It can also be used to calculate the driving force for crystal growth and obtain more precise estimates of the homogeneous nucleation frequency in glass-forming alloys. This method requires only knowledge of the phase diagram and a few readily available thermodynamic quantities as input data