Structure of Liquid Metals and Alloys
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/steelcast2026.03.041Keywords:
Alloy, melt, microheterogeneity, models, structureAbstract
The paper presents a literature review of materials on the structure and physicochemical properties of liquid metals and alloys. Liquid alloys, the composition of which corresponds to solid solutions, can have a microhomogeneous structure. One of its components is microregions with coordination of atoms, which is similar to the original crystal packing. In this case, various anomalies are recorded in the temperature or concentration dependences, and intersections or extrema appear. Based on these data, a conclusion is made about structural rearrangements in melts, including the destruction of microhet- erogeneities. It is known that in the theory of melts there is no ideal structural basic element on the basis of which it is possible to build a model of an “ideal melt” and this is a problem in the development of the theory of the liquid state of single-phase and multiphase metal systems. Molten metals and alloys constitute a group of metallic liquids – this is a large part of the class of disordered condensed systems. Currently, existing theories and models of the microheterogeneous structure of melts are divided into three large groups: quasichemical, cluster and colloidal. Quasichemical theory takes into account the ordering of atoms in a metallic liquid, that is, it is assumed that the probability of atoms of the 1st and 2nd types in one of two neighbor- ing places is different. Cluster theory is considered in the microheterogeneous model of metallic melts as a microgrouping of atoms that retain a certain short-range order with their mutual arrangement and which are united by the general oscillatory motion of the entire grouping and at the same time half-connected at any moment with the entire mass of matter in a given volume. The colloidal model was formulated to explain the microheterogeneity of eutectic melts. Eutectic melts were consid- ered as classical colloidal systems with a particle dispersion of the order of 1-10 nm. For binary melts with eutectic type of phase diagrams, the possibility of metastable states during melting of such a sys- tem was shown. This is due to the existence of critical sizes of nuclei of the dispersed phase at which the chemical potentials are equal and correspond to the state of unstable equilibrium. For microheterogeneous melts under certain conditions (high temperatures, close chemical compositions of the phases in contact with each other) are characterized by sufficiently low val- ues of interfacial tension, i. e. dispersion of inclusions can occur to the formation of a lyophilic system. The presented results show that significant supersaturation of solid solutions and movement of the eutectic point to the region of higher concentra- tion of the second component leads to the appearance of a quasi-eutectic structure in alloys of hypereutectic compositions, rearrangement of eutectic phases and primary crystals and a change in their morphology.
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