Crystallite
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A crystallite is a domain of solid-state matter that has the same
structure as a single crystal.
Solid objects that are large enough to see and handle are rarely
composed of a single crystal, except for a few cases (gems, silicon
single crystals for the electronics industry, certain types of
fiber, and single crystals of a nickel-based super alloy for
turbojet engines). Most materials are polycrystalline; they are made
of a large number of single crystals — crystallites — held together
by thin layers of amorphous solid. The crystallite size can vary
from a few nanometers to several millimeters.
If the individual crystallites are oriented randomly (that is, if
they lack texture), a large enough volume of polycrystalline
material will be approximately isotropic. This property helps the
simplifying assumptions of continuum mechanics to apply to
real-world solids. |
However, most manufactured materials have some alignment to their
crystallites, which must be taken into account for accurate
predictions of their behavior and characteristics.
Metallurgists often refer to crystallites as "grains"; thus,
fracture can be an inter-granular fracture or a Tran granular
fracture. But there is an ambiguity with powder grains: a powder
grain can be made of several crystallites. Thus, the (powder) "grain
size" found by laser granulometry can be different from the "grain
size" (or, rather, crystallite size) found by X-ray diffraction
(e.g. Scherrer method), by optical microscopy under polarized light,
or by scanning electron microscopy (backscattered electrons).
Although the term "crystallite" is more precise, the boundary
between two crystallites is traditionally known as a grain boundary.
The term "crystallite boundary" is rarely used, and the fact that
powder grains are not attached to one another, and so do not form
boundaries, helps to remove ambiguity in this case.
Grain boundaries disrupt the motion of dislocations through a
material; reducing crystallite size is therefore a common way to
improve strength, often without any sacrifice in toughness. This
crystallite size-strength relationship is given by the Hall-Petch
relationship. The high interfacial energy and relatively weak
bonding in grain boundaries makes them preferred sites for the onset
of corrosion and for the precipitation of new phases from the solid.
They are also important to many of the mechanisms of creep.
Grain boundaries are generally only a few nanometers wide. In common
materials, crystallites are large enough that grain boundaries
account for a small fraction of the material. However, very small
grain sizes are achievable. In nanocrystalline solids, grain
boundaries become a significant volume fraction of the material,
with profound effects on such properties as diffusion and
plasticity. In the limit of small crystallites, as the volume
fraction of grain boundaries approaches 100%, the material ceases to
have any crystalline character, and thus becomes an amorphous solid.
Generally, polycrystals cannot be superheated; they will melt
promptly once they are brought to a high enough temperature. This is
because grain boundaries are amorphous, and serve as nucleation
points for the liquid phase. By contrast, if no solid nucleus is
present as a liquid cools, it tends to become supercooled. Since
this is undesirable for mechanical materials, alloy designers often
take steps against it. |
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