材料期刊网

Non-equilibrium morphology has received much attention from both scientific and engineering points of view for its intricate pattern selection mechanisms and useful industrial application. Most study of non-equilibrium is about the metal, alloy and other simple system. The complex silicate system is rarely involved. However, silicate is very important in geosciences and ceramic industry. In this paper, two kinds of non-equilibrium crystal morphologies of silicate: dendrite of diopside and spherulite of plagioclase, were introduced. Combining with the other kinds of non-equilibrium morphologies, the characteristics of micro-macro and anisotropy-isotropy of the non-equilibrium morphologies were discussed. Dendrite of diopside is micro- and macro-anisotropic, spherulite of plagioclase is micro-anisotropic, but macro-isotropic, fractal of NH4Cl is also micro-anisotropic, but macro-isotropic, dense-branching morphology (DBM) formed in non-crystalline system is micro-and macro-isotropic. Based on the micro-macro interplay on the pattern formation, it is proposed that the interplay between micro-anisotropy of crystal structure vs macro-isotropy of undercooling in crystal growth system will control the morphological evolution. The nucleation rate related to the anisotropy for the morphological evolution was also discussed. The fact that diopside develops dendrite and plagioclase develop spherulite in our experiment is due to their structural anisotropy difference.