Melting phenomena in binary alloy thin films

The paper deals with the description of the meting and surface melting phenomena in thin films of the binary, AB3 type, alloys. The theory is based on the model consisting of pairwise interactions between neighbouring atoms belonging to the sublattices in the form of the monoatomic layers parallel to the surface. The effect of the melting kinetics is discussed in connection with layer by layer process and with a collapse of the crystalline sample by the discontinuous jump of the crystallinity parameter at some thickness of the quasi-liquid layer which corresponds to the phase transition at the global thin film melting temperature. In the case of binary alloys a collapse depends on the alloy components concentration at the surface for a given crystallographic orientation. The surface melting and surface disordering described as phenomena of different origin are discussed in the context of their interdependence for three surface orientations (1 1 1), (1 1 0) and (1 0 0). The local surface melting temperature and the thickness dependence of the global melting temperature are calculated.