Determination of the interfacial energy ratio in two-phase systems by measurement of interphase contact

Abstract For a system of spherical particles in a matrix, a relationship is derived between the equilibrium degree of particle contact and the ratio of the interfacial energies, i.e., the energy of the contact boundary between particles and of the particle-matrix interface. The degree of particle contact is expressed in terms of the contiguity and the average number of contacts per particle, both of which can be measured by counting on planar sections. Thus the relationship provides an alternative to the measurement of dihedral angle for the determination of the energy ratio. The method is applied to the systems TiC-Co, TaC-Co, and WC-Co and, in combination with wetting data, is used to estimate the surface and interfacial energies in these systems.