The cooling rate dependence of crystallization for liquid copper: A molecular dynamics study

The resulting crystallization microstructure of the liquid copper and the cooling rate were studied through the constant-pressure dynamics simulation s based on second-moment approxiamtion tight-binding scheme. The meta-stable hcp-type and most-stable fcc-type structures can co-exist in final configurations. By controlling the cooling rate these structures can co-exist in all sorts of proportion and in various forms such as layering and phase separation. The faster cooling rates resulted in larger percents of the metastable hcpphase and easy layering. The slower cooling rate will prefer the more stable structure having lower energy at zero temperature.