Revealing curvature and stochastic effects on grain growth kinetics: A thermodynamic perspective from the extremal principle

In the theoretical development of normal grain growth, the roles of "drift" (curvature effect) and "diffusion" (stochastic effect) have been an open question for many years. By coupling contributions of microstructure entropy and grain topological interactions with thermodynamic extremal principle (TEP), this letter extends the existing thermodynamic framework of grain growth. It not only explains the curvature and stochastic effects by thermodynamics but provides a new mean-field model for grain growth. Through thermodynamic modification, this new model can yield a high accuracy representation of existing ultra-large phase-field simulated results.