In situ studies of dendritic growth in Ga-In alloys

Dendritic growth is an important phenomenon responsible for the evolving microstructure in almost all commercially important metals and alloys. The key in understanding dendrite patterns is to study the shape and stability of the dendrite tips, since they stand at the beginning of the morphological evolution. The dendrite tip parameters (growth velocity, tip shape and its radius) in metals are very important for extending the experimental validation of dendrite growth theories towards metallic materials. Since the tip region exhibits the strongest dynamics and smallest length scales within a dendritic structure, its imaging is accompanied by significant noise, which prevents a straight-forward use of standard analysis methods. A quantitative study of the dendrite tip dynamics and its operating state at high resolution, in time and space requires high-performance X-ray techniques that can be only provided by synchrotron sources.