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Published in Scopus (Q1)
2026-03-30
Dr. Osama Ibrahim Al-Janabi, a lecturer at the Renewable Energy Research Center, University of Anbar, published a research paper with researchers from British universities in the international journal "Journal of Alloys and Compounds," indexed in Scopus (Q1).
The paper is titled:
“Mechanism for step-mediated partitioning in Si-Ge rapidly solidified from its parent melt.”
Cite score: 11.8
We studied the distribution behavior of a silicon-30% by weight germanium alloy solidified from its parent melt, both in near-equilibrium conditions and under rapid solidification conditions. Contrary to the symmetrical equilibrium phase diagram, we observed a step-mediated partitioning, with several distinct germanium-rich structures present in the grain boundary region. The degree of this variation increases with increasing cooling rate, with little evidence of solute retention. Three of these interfaces were examined stepwise using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) across a range of cooling rates from less than 1 second to more than 25,000 seconds. Electron diffraction patterns in a selected region indicate that the germanium-rich phase is chemically ordered in all cases, which also contradicts the balanced phase diagram. High-resolution TEM and geometric phase analysis techniques were used to investigate the stress state at these interfaces, leading us to believe that the stepwise distribution is a way to reduce the lattice stress caused by the atomic size difference between silicon and germanium. This behavior is well-known in silicon-germanium thin films but has not been widely observed in solid silicon-germanium.
