ABSTRACTAbnormal grain growth is characterized by the lack of a steady state grain size distribution. In extreme cases the size distribution becomes transiently bimodal, with a few grains growing much larger than the average size. This is known as secondary grain growth. In polycrystalline thin films, the surface energy γs and film/substrate interfacial energy γi vary with grain orientation, providing an orientation-selective driving force that can lead to abnormal grain growth. We employ a mean field analysis that incorporates the effect of interface energy anisotropy to predict the evolution of the grain size/orientation distribution. While abnormal grain growth and texture evolution always result when interface energy anisotropy is present, whether secondary grain growth occurs will depend sensitively on the details of the orientation dependence of γi.
Mean field analysis of theSO(3) lattice gauge theory at finite temperature