Kinetics of phase separation and ordering in alloys

A series of works where the fundamental master equation is used to develop a consistent description of the evolution of non-equilibrium atomic distributions in an alloy is reviewed. General equations for the temporal evolution of local concentrations and correlators of their fluctuations are derived, and various approximate methods for treatments of these equations are described. The methods developed are used for detailed studies of a great number of problems of kinetics of phase separation and ordering in alloys, including the phase separation of disordered alloys via both the spinodal decomposition and the nucleation mechanism; the kinetics of the B2 and the D0(3)-type orderings; features of the vacancy-mediated kinetics; and the kinetics of the L1(2) and L1(0)-type orderings. These studies reveal numerous new and interesting microstructural effects, many of them agreeing well with the experimental observations. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.