Particle coarsening in binary and multicomponent alloys

The theory of particle coarsening (Ostwald ripening) for multicomponent alloys was reviewed recently by Umantsev and Olson. In addition, they presented their own formulation for systems with a diagonal diffusivity matrix and they discussed how coarsening is affected by non-ideal behavior of the solid solution surrounding the precipitate particles. The present communication extends their work to include off diagonal terms in the diffusivity and shows that coarsening is independent of the solid solution thermodynamics followed by the continuous phase. This independence was recognized before, because changes in the diffusivity due to non-ideal behavior are balanced by changes in the concentration differences, due to surface curvature, that drive diffusion.