Separation of Mass Transfer Mechanisms in Binary Metal Melts When Choosing the Orientation of the Component Distribution Channel

The binary and more complex metallic melts are characterized by instability of composition along the height of the melt. After having been kept for a short time in a vertical nonwetted vessel (crucible or capillary), the initially homogeneous melt acquires a gradient of component concentrations along the height, and the heavy component is distributed along the height of the crucible according to the barometric distribution of large particles (clusters). This is one of the factors responsible for the cluster structure of melts. An analysis of the experimental results leads to the conclusion that there is a second mechanism of mass transfer in liquid metals, namely, the transfer of atoms in the interphase monatomic layer at the boundary between the melt and capillary wall, which occurs simultaneously with diffusion. A number of special experiments clearly confirm this hypothesis. The experiment showed that the choice of orientation for the distribution channel of the melt components relative to the direction of the gravitational field makes it possible to isolate both mechanisms practically in “pure form,” and there is evidently no other way to explain the results of the experiment.