Stress effects on the kinetics of nanoscale diffusion processes

Schmitz et al. [Acta Materialia 57 (2009) 2673] showed experimentally that stress effects significantly influence the intermixing rate but surprisingly the parabolic growth rate is preserved. The influence on the intermixing rate was interpreted as a switching between the Darken and Nernst–Planck regimes caused by the diffusion-induced stress. We analyse theoretically how the stress field shifts the system from the Darken to the Nernst–Planck regime, why stress relaxation is not observed even though expectedand why the diffusion kinetics is not influenced by the developing stress field.

Research highlights
► Diffusion induced stress shifts the system from Darken to Nernst–Planck regime.
► The development of the Nernst–Planck regime is surprisingly fast.
► Stress relaxation is not observed although it would be expected.
► Unexpectedly, diffusion induced stress does not influence the diffusion kinetics.