AbstractDendritic growth is the most ubiquitous form of crystal growth encountered when metals and alloys solidify under low thermal gradients. The growth of thermal dendrites in pure melts is generally acknowledged to be controlled by the diffusive transport of latent heat from the moving crystal-melt interface into its supercooled melt. However, this formulation is incomplete, and the physics of an additional selection rule, coupled to the transport solution, is necessary to predict uniquely the dendrite tip velocity and radius of curvature as a function of the supercooling. Unfortunately, experimental confirmation or evidence is ambiguous, because dendritic growth can be severely complicated by buoyancy induced convection. Recent experiments performed in the microgravity environment of the space shuttle Columbia (STS-62) quantitatively show that convection alters tip velocities and radii of curvature of succinonitrile (SCN) dendrites. In addition, these data can be used to evaluate how well the Ivantsov diffusion solution, coupled to a scaling constant, matches the dendritic growth data under microgravity conditions.
On the Selective Transport of Nutrients through Polymer Inclusion Membranes Based on Ionic Liquids