Q. Zhang et al., Origin of asymmetric growth during solid-state amorphization studied with molecular-dynamics simulation, J APPL PHYS, 87(11), 2000, pp. 7696-7701
Solid-state interfacial reaction in the Ni/Nb multilayers upon thermal anne
aling is investigated with molecular-dynamics simulation. The result shows
that amorphization takes place at medium temperatures and the growth of the
amorphous interlayer presents an asymmetric behavior due to faster consumi
ng of the Ni layer than the Nb layer. Consequently, a Ni-enriched amorphous
phase is formed together with some unreacted Nb before complete amorphizat
ion, which agrees well with the experimental observations. Moreover, it is
revealed that the Nb lattice can accommodate a large number of Ni atoms and
still retain crystalline structure, while a small amount of Nb atoms induc
e a spontaneous decay of the Ni lattice, which is essentially the physical
origin of the asymmetric growth observed in not only the Ni-Nb system but a
lso in the other systems studied so far. (C) 2000 American Institute of Phy
sics. [S0021-8979(00)04311-5].