Affiliation:
1. CAS Key Laboratory of Magnetic Materials and Devices Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Magnetic Materials and Application Technology Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering Chinese Academy of Sciences Ningbo 315201 P. R. China
2. School of Future Technology University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049 P. R. China
3. Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049 P. R. China
4. Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory Dongguan Guangdong 523808 P. R. China
Abstract
AbstractAs the most popular liquid metal (LM), gallium (Ga) and its alloys are emerging as functional materials due to their unique combination of fluidic and metallic properties near room temperature. As an important branch of utilizing LMs, micro‐ and submicron‐particles of Ga‐based LM are widely employed in wearable electronics, catalysis, energy, and biomedicine. Meanwhile, the phase transition is crucial not only for the applications based on this reversible transformation process, but also for the solidification temperature at which fluid properties are lost. While Ga has several solid phases and exhibits unusual size‐dependent phase behavior. This complex process makes the phase transition and undercooling of Ga uncontrollable, which considerably affects the application performance. In this work, extensive (nano‐)calorimetry experiments are performed to investigate the polymorph selection mechanism during liquid Ga crystallization. It is surprisingly found that the crystallization temperature and crystallization pathway to either α −Ga or β −Ga can be effectively engineered by thermal treatment and droplet size. The polymorph selection process is suggested to be highly relevant to the capability of forming covalent bonds in the equilibrium supercooled liquid. The observation of two different crystallization pathways depending on the annealing temperature may indicate that there exist two different liquid phases in Ga.
Funder
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province
Science and Technology Innovation 2025 Major Project of Ningbo
Subject
Biomaterials,Biotechnology,General Materials Science,General Chemistry