Ordering phenomena in undercooled alloys. Final report, 1992--1996

Most of the work performed under this grant was on the topic of kinetics of ordering in undercooled alloys. Especially in the last year, however, the direction changed to a study of vibrational entropy of alloy phases. Kinetics arguments were based explicitly on the vacancy mechanism for atom movements. The emphasis was on how individual atom movements are influenced by the local chemical environment of the moving atom, and how atom movements cause changes in the local chemical environments. The author formulated a kinetic master equation method to treat atom movements on a crystal lattice with a vacancy mechanism. Some of these analyses are as detailed as any treatment of the statistical kinetics of atom movements in crystalline alloys. Three results came from this work and are given here