Growth of Self Organized Eutectic Fibers from LiF-Rare Earth Fluoride Systems
Eutectic fibers consisting of an ordered arrangement of LiF fibrils inside a LiREF4 matrix (RE = Y, Gd) can be grown with the micro-pulling-down method at sufficiently large pulling rate exceeding 120 mm/h. The distance between individual fibrils could be scaled down to 1 micrometer at 300 mm/h pulling. LiF-LiYF4 has stronger tendency to form facetted eutectic colonies than LiF-LiGdF4, explained by the larger entropy of melting of the former.
cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗