Isothermal nanocrystallization kinetics during polymorphic transformation

Abstract The experimental value of Avrami exponent during polymorphic nanocrystallization deviates from the theoretical prediction of the Kolmogorov–Johnson–Mehl–Avrami (KJMA) isothermal kinetics. The assumption of negligible nuclei volume, implicit in KJMA, is violated for all such transformations involving nano-sized grains. A discrete adaptation of the KJMA model is used to study the effect of the non-zero nuclei volume on nanocrystallization kinetics. Transformations initiated by homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation are analyzed under constant nucleation and growth rate conditions. For homogeneous nucleation, a universal scaling relation with respect to finite nuclei size is found. In contrast to this, for the heterogeneous case a series of linear scaling relations are observed with respect to the nucleation conditions.