The solid-liquid interfacial free energy of lead from supercooling data

Abstract

Abstract Small liquid particles of lead having diameters in the range 100 .Å.-3000 Å have been supercooled to ∼90°c in a clean vacuum system attached to an electron microscope. This represents a much greater supercooling of lead than has hitherto been reported. Assuming that the liquid-solid transformation was controlled by homogeneous nucleation kinetics, a lower limit of the liquid-solid interfacial free energy is calculated to be ∼ 69 erg cm−2. This is much greater than the value of 33–3 erg cm−2 calculated by Turnbull (1950) from supercooling data.