CONSTITUTIONAL SUPERCOOLING AND CELL FORMATION

In the preceding chapter numerous examples have been given of how a solute-rich
boundary layer builds up in front of a solidifying planar interface. Several early workers,
among them Papapetrou,1 understood qualitatively how such a solute buildup could lead
to instability of the plane front. Not until the important studies of Chalmers and
coworkers,2’3 however, were the ideas quantified and applied to metal crystal growth
from the melt.
Figure 3-1 shows qualitatively how the driving force for instability of the plane
front develops. A solute-rich layer is present in front of a growing interface, in which
liquid composition is a maximum Cl at the interface and decreases with increasing
distance from the interface. Now, with the aid of the phase diagram, it is a simple task to
plot the equilibrium liquidus temperature of the liquid as a function of distance from the
interface; this is done in Fig. 3-lc and d. The equilibrium liquidus temperature increases
with distance from the interface because the lower the solute content, the higher the
liquidus temperature. Next, the actual temperature in the growing crystal is superimposed
on the same graph. Since equilibrium is assumed at the solid-