Transformations of Materials (IOP Concise Physics)

Phase transformations are among the most intriguing and technologically useful phenomena in materials, particularly with regard to controlling microstructure.

After a review of thermodynamics, this book has chapters on Brownian motion and the diffusion equation, diffusion in solids based on transition-state theory, spinodal decomposition, nucleation and growth, instabilities in solidification, and diffusionless transformations. Each chapter includes exercises whose solutions are available in a separate manual.

This book is based on the notes from a graduate course taught in the Centre for Doctoral Training in the Theory and Simulation of Materials. The course was attended by students with undergraduate degrees in physics, mathematics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. The notes from this course, and this book, were written to accommodate these diverse backgrounds.

Dimitri Dimitrievich Vvedensky is Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. He obtained his B.S. in Mathematics at the University of Maryland and his S.M. and Ph.D in Materials Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has been on the faculty at Imperial since 1985.

He is the author of more than 250 technical publications, including eight authored or edited books, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society. He has been a Guest Professor in the Department of Physics at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich and at the University of Aix-Marseille, the Roentgen Professor at the University of Wurzburg, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA. He is a three time recipient of the Rector's Award for Teaching Excellence.