β Growth kinetics from α peritectic melting of oxide films

The peritectic melting of α→β+liquid is of great importance in various fields. Here, by high temperature optical microscopy, the peritectic melting evolution was in-situ investigated, where the α phase is the YBa2Cu3O7−y film deposited on single crystalline substrates and the β phase is the Y2BaCuO5 grain. A variety of thermal stabilities of α films associated with forming behaviors of β grains were observed, which were mainly attributed to two factors. One is the film microstructure as an internal origin. The other is the driving force supplied by a heating up process as an external condition. More distinctively, analogous to the growth kinetics in crystallization, we derived peritectic melting kinetics of thin films relating to the β formation. The correlation among film microstructures, driving force and melting behaviors was well established. Most importantly, this new approach of the kinetic analysis in the peritectic melting should be universally valid for more film/substrate constructions.

Highlight
► This paper investigated the peritectic melting evolution of Y123 film.
► Factors affecting forming behaviors of Y211 grains were analyzed.
► Y211 growth kinetics was derived.