Diffusion and Thermodynamics of Materials

The diffusion of atoms is an inherent feature of matter, and the rules which describe the phenomenon are important from both the purely practical and the theoretical perspectives: it is a major rate-controlling process in phase transformations, crystal growth, recrystallization and recovery, creep, sintering, surface treatment and many other situations. Being typically a non-equilibrium macroscopic phenomenon, diffusion can be properly described in terms of the thermodynamics of irreversible processes. At the same time, phenomenological diffusion characteristics represent the mean values of microscopic parameters and reflect the microscopic structure of matter. In the latter case, they contribute to providing a deeper understanding of the physical background to the observed behavior of matter in general.
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