Interfacial pattern formation far from equilibrium

Abstract

Over the past few years diffusion-controlled systems have been shown to share a common set of interfacial morphologies. The singular nature of the microscopic dynamics of surface tension and kinetic growth far from equilibrium are critical to morphology selection, with special importance attributed to the anisotropy of these effects. The morphologies which develop can be organized via a morphology diagram according to the driving force and the effective anisotropy. We focus on the properties of the dense-branching morphology (DBM) which appears for sufficiently weak effective anisotropy, and the nature of morphology transitions between the DBM and dendritic growth stabilized by either surface tension or kinetic effects. The DBM is studied in the Hele-Shaw cell, and its structure analyzed by linear stability analysis. A comparison is made between the power spectrum of the structure and the stability analysis. We then provide a detailed account of the morphology diagram and morphology transitions in an anisotropic Hele-Shaw cell. Theoretically the question of morphology transitions is addressed within the boundary-layer model by computing selected velocities as a function of the undercooling for different values of the surface tension and the kinetic term. We argue that the fastest growing morphology is selected whether it is the DBM, surface tension dendrites, or kinetic dendrites. A comparison is made with our experimental results in electrochemical deposition for the correspondence between growth velocities and morphology transitions.