Wagner-Vengrenovich Distribution

Abstract

The process of coarsening of nanoclusters or nanocrystals (NCs) is investigated for the case when cluster growth (dissolution) is governed simultaneously by both diffusion along dislocation pipes and the rate of formation of chemical connections (chemical reaction) at cluster surface, namely, Wagner’s growing mechanism. For that, the total flow of atoms to (from) a cluster is represented by two parts, namely, diffusion part and the Wagner (kinetic) one. The dependence of the rate of growth of NC on the ratio of the parts of the total flow has been determined as well as the NC’s size distribution function referred to as the Wagner-Vengrenovich distribution. Computed distribution is compared with experimentally obtained histograms.