The heterogeneous nucleation of a melt on dislocations in superheated crystals was analysed in order to derive a superheating limit for massive heterogeneous nucleation on dislocations. This was clearly lower than the limit for homogeneous melting. Even for a crystal with a density of only 100/cm2 of screw and edge unit dislocations, the associated threshold homologous temperatures were just 1.068 and 1.095, respectively for various metals. The effect of the dislocation density upon this temperature was limited by a sharp decrease in the critical heterogeneous nucleation energy with increasing temperature.

Heterogeneous Nucleation Catastrophe on Dislocations in Superheated Crystals. D.Ma, Y.Li: Journal of Physics - Condensed Matter, 2000, 12[43], 9123-8