Summary

The monograph systematizes the results of a study of supercooling during the crystallization of one- and two-component melts. It is shown that the physical cause of supercooling is the presence in the system of additional energy connected with the crystal-melt interface. Such a boundary naturally occurs when a nucleus of a crystalline phase is formed in the melt. Using the method of changing the condensation mechanism, an empirical dependence between relative supercooling and wetting angle in the investigated “melt-substrate” pair was obtained. It is found that the relative supercooling is approximately linearly related to the contact angle, at least up to angle values at the 130° level. Using the methods of quartz resonator and electrical resistance measurement were observed melting-crystallization hysteresis and to study supercooling in multilayer films. Using such methods, supercooling in various contact pairs was determined, and the results obtained earlier using the method of changing the condensation mechanism were confirmed. New information has also been received on the temperature width of phase transitions and the influence of the morphology and composition of melts on this value. It is shown that decreasing the most probable size of liquid particles decreases the temperature width of the range in which their crystallization occurs. It has been obtained an indication of the existence of other factors, different from impurity factors, which cause a decrease in the supercooling value. In the study of supercooling of binary alloys, it is shown that the general regularities established for single-component systems are also valid for them. This indicates the commonality of physical principles conditioning supercooling of single- and multicomponent systems and confirms the effectiveness of using the methods of phenomenological thermodynamics for quantitative description of supercooling in fundamental research and applied developments.