A simulation study of microstructure evolution during solidification process of liquid metal Ni

A molecular dynamics simulation study has been performed for the microstructure evolution in a liquid metal Ni system during crystallization process at two cooling rates by adopting the embedded atom method (EAM) model potential. The bond-type index method of Honeycutt--Andersen (HA) and a new cluster-type index method (CTIM-2) have been used to detect and analyse the microstructures in this system. It is demonstrated that the cooling rate plays a critical role in the microstructure evolution: below the crystallization temperature $T_{\rm c}$, the effects of cooling rate are very remarkable and can be fully displayed. At different cooling rates of $2.0\times10^{13}$\,K\,$\cdot$\,s$^{-1}$ and $1.0\times10^{12}$\,K\,$\cdot$\,s$^{-1}$, two different kinds of crystal structures are obtained in the system. The first one is the coexistence of the hcp (expressed by (12 0 0 0 6 6) in CTIM-2) and the fcc (12 0 0 0 12 0) basic clusters consisting of 1421 and 1422 bond-types, and the hcp basic cluster becomes the dominant one with decreasing temperature, the second one is mainly the fcc (12 0 0 0 12 0) basic clusters consisting of 1421 bond-type, and their crystallization temperatures $T_{\rm c}$ would be 1073 and 1173\,K, respectively.