Molecular dynamics study of high temperature wetting kinetics for Al/NiAl and Al/Ni3Al systems: Effects of grain boundaries

The high-temperature wetting of metal droplets on alloy metal substrates is of practical interest owing to its wide range of applications in brazing, welding and soldering. The surface and bulk of the alloy metals contain very many grain boundaries, whose effects on high-temperature wetting and the associated mechanisms have not been satisfactorily studied. In this work, two spreading scenarios are considered using molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the effects of grain boundaries on the wetting kinetics of the spreading of Al droplets on substrates with (polycrystalline NiAl) or without (monocrystalline NiAl) dissolutive reactions and at various rates of solution (monocrystalline and polycrystalline Ni3Al). Dissolutive reactions occur only when an Al droplet spreads over a polycrystalline NiAl substrate, and they significantly accelerate the wetting kinetics. Irregular atomic alignment and associated with grain boundaries, atomic migration or dissolution reactions occur more easily on grain boundaries than on ideal crystal substrates. Dissolutive reactions occur when Al droplets spread on either monocrystalline or polycrystalline Ni3Al substrates; however, grain boundaries influence the dissolution rates in various spreading stages. The dissolution rate of the Al(l)/polycrystalline Ni3Al(s) system with grain boundaries exceeds that of the Al(l)/monocrystalline Ni3Al(s) system in the initial stage of spreading, but is less than that of the Al(l)/monocrystalline Ni3Al(s) system in the final stage of spreading. Correspondingly, the spreading of the Al(l)/polycrystalline NiAl(s) system is faster than that of Al(l)/monocrystalline NiAl(s) system in the first stage but slower in the last stage. This result confirms that dissolutive wetting is dominated by dissolutive rate rather than by the total dissolutive quantity, and a high dissolution rate accelerates wetting. ? 2017 Elsevier Ltd