Kinetic features of alloy ordering with many types of ordered domain: D03-type orderings

The earlier-described master equation approach to the configurational kinetics of nonequilibrium alloys is used to study kinetic features of ‘multivariant’ orderings for which more than two types of ordered domain are possible. To this end we make extensive simulations of various phase transformations involving D03-type orderings for a number of alloy models. The microscopic structure of various antiphase boundaries in the D03 phase is also studied. A consistent approach to describing the effect of elastic forces on microstructural evolution is outlined and used to study the kinetics of a multivariant ordering accompanied by alloy decomposition. Our simulations reveal a number of peculiar kinetic features of multivariant orderings, many of them agreeing well with experimental observations