Al-doping influence on crystal growth of Ni–Al alloy: Experimental testing of a theoretical model

Recently, a condensing potential model was developed to evaluate the crystallization ability of bulk materials [Ye X X, Ming C, Hu Y C and Ning X J 2009 J. Chem. Phys. 130 164711 and Peng K, Ming C, Ye X X, Zhang W X, Zhuang J and Ning X J 2011 Chem. Phys. Lett. 501 330], showing that the best temperature for single crystal growth is about0.6Tm, where Tm is the melting temperature, and for Ni–Al alloy, more than 6 wt% of Al-doping will badly reduce the crystallization ability. In order to verify these predictions, we fabricated Ni–Al films with different concentrations of Al on Si substrates at room temperature by pulsed laser deposition, and post-annealed the films at 833, 933, 1033（- 0.6Tm）,1133, and 1233 K in vacuum furnace, respectively. The x-ray diffraction spectra show that annealing at 0.6Tm is indeed best for larger crystal grain formation, and the film crystallization ability remarkably declines with more than 6-wt% Al doping.