TEMPERATURE HEATING RATE TRANSFORMATION CURVES - A NEW TOOL FOR THE STUDY OF CRYSTALLIZATION

A new temperature-heating rate diagram is proposed for the characterization of crystallization behaviour in amorphous materials. In such a diagram one can construct the temperature-heating rate-transformation (T-HR-T) curves, which give the loci of the points where a certain degree of crystallization has been achieved for each temperature, as a function of the heating rate used in the experiment. We demonstrate that the low-temperature part of these curves can be obtained from the study of the crystallization kinetics. This study can be performed easily using a short time response technique such as neutron and synchrotron x-ray diffraction or differential scanning calorimetry.