title: Anisotropic kinetics of solid phase transition from first principles: alpha-omega phase transformation of Zr.
abstract: Structural inhomogeneity is ubiquitous in solid crystals and plays critical roles in phase nucleation and propagation. Here, we develop a heterogeneous solid-solid phase transition theory for predicting the prevailing heterophase junctions, the metastable states governing microstructure evolution in solids. Using this theory and first-principles pathway sampling simulation, we determine two types of heterophase junctions pertaining to metal α-ω phase transition at different pressures and predict the reversibility of transformation only at low pressures, i.e. below 7 GPa. The low-pressure transformation is dominated by displacive Martensitic mechanism, while the high-pressure one is controlled by the reconstructive mechanism. The mechanism of α-ω phase transition is thus highly pressure-sensitive, for which the traditional homogeneous model fails to explain the experimental observations. The results provide the first atomic-level evidence on the coexistence of two different solid phase transition mechanisms in one system.
authors.affiliation: Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Material, Key Laboratory of Computational Physical Science (Ministry of Education), Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Department of Chemistry, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. zpliu@fudan.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Shu-Hui
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Guan
authors.affiliation: Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Material, Key Laboratory of Computational Physical Science (Ministry of Education), Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Department of Chemistry, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. zpliu@fudan.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Zhi-Pan
authors.initials: ZP
authors.lastname: Liu