Nucleation and growth mechanism in the metastable liquid miscibility gap of Pd-Ni-P

Abstract Recently, for the first time, a metastable liquid miscibility (MLMG) in a metallic alloy system was found and determined (Z. D. Wu et al. J. Non-Cryst. Solids 410 (2015) 51–57 and W. Z. Zhou et al., J. Non-Cryst. Solids, 432 (2016) 420–425). According to thermodynamics, a MLMG consists of two decomposition reactions, which are liquid state nucleation and growth (LNG) and liquid state spinodal decomposition (LSD). However, in all of the results reported so far, only LSD was found. In this work, by using Porod's law, decomposition by LNG was found, confirming the existence of the LNG regime in the MLMG.