Compositional patterning in irradiated immiscible alloys

The spontaneous formation of surface compositional patterning of quenched binary alloys driven by irradiation is numerically studied by means of a phenomenologically modified Cahn–Hilliard type equation for the local concentration field. In the present model the irradiation effect is modeled as a ballistic mixing with an average distance of atomic relocation R and its frequency Γ. From several two-dimensional computer simulations, it is shown that competitive effects between phase separation and irradiation-induced mixing might provide a novel way to stabilize and tune the steady-state nanostructures on the surface of phase separating materials under some irradiation conditions (i.e., in some region on (R,Γ) space).