Instantaneous crystalline annihilation during normal grain growth in aluminum thin films

A. Thon*, A. Brokman

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

The process of normal grain growth in unsupported thin aluminum film was studied in situ by heating the specimen during inspection in the transmission electron microscope. The growth mechanism was found to involve the instantaneous annihilation of a grain as a whole and its consumption by neighboring grains. This elementary process occurs in a time interval shorter than 0.04 s (the video camera time lag between two successive exposures), and it cannot be explained in terms of grain-boundary self-diffusion. Often the annihilation of a grain is followed by a cascade of similar events in its immediate neighborhood. It is possible that long-wave instabilities at the grain boundary grow through a critical stage in which the topological stability of the boundary is destroyed, yielding the spontaneous growth.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)5331-5334
Number of pages4
JournalJournal of Applied Physics
Volume63
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - 1988

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