A New Method of Evaluation of Melt/Crystal Interfacial Energy and Activation Energy of Diffusion

We propose a new method of evaluating both interfacial energy σ between melt and crystal and the activation energy of diffusion Ea by analyzing the crystallization experiment with the use of gas jet levitation method. We show that there arise three features of crystallization of a cooling melt sphere depending on σ and Ea: (A) crystallization near the melting temperature, (B) crystallization from the hypercooled melt, and (C) no crystallization. Applying the present method to the experiment of crystallization of a melt sphere of forsterite composition, we evaluate its σ and Ea to be σ=613±30ergcm-2 and Ea/k=(2.3±0.2)×104K, where k is the Boltzmann constant.