Metastable phase formation in electromagnetic levitation, drop-tube and gas-atomization techniques: A comparative study

摘要

Improving the understanding of theformation of metastable states resulting from non-equilibrium solidification is mainly found byapplying containerless processing on single droplets,as this allows in-situ observation of undercooledmelts. Electromagnetic levitation and free-fallmethods under ultrahigh vacuum conditions (in spaceor on earth in a high drop-tube facility) play apreponderant role for studying metallic melts. Thoughnot very apparent, containerless processing is alsowidely employed on industrial scales, especiallythrough gas-atomization processing. Moreover,spraying of droplets in laboratory-scale drop-tubesappears to be a key technique for the development ofmicrostructure-selection maps for dropletsolidification. This survey presents experimentaltrends in containerless processing for studyingmetastable phase formation from undercooled melts.Recent works using the mentioned techniques areanalysed in order to reveal their interest with regardto material preferences, scientific or industrialperspectives or other topics of relevance.