Description
The stability of a solid solution to all infinitesimal composition fluctuations is considered, taking surface tension and elastic energy into account. It is found that for infinite isotropic solids, free from imperfections the spinodal marks the limit of metastability to such fluctuations only if there is no change in molar volume with composition. Otherwise the elastic energy due to a fluctuation stabilizes the solution and alters the criterion for the limit of metastability. For an unstable solution the kinetics of decomposition are discussed and the expected mean particle size or wavelength of the most rapidly growing fluctuation is derived . . .

The spinodal has long been regarded as a limit beyond which a homogeneous phase could no longer be metastable. But only recently has it become apparent that a phase beyond the spinodal would decompose by simple diffusional clustering mechanism quite different from the nucleation and growth mechanisms encountered for metastable phases. The theory of spinodal decomposition, which is based on the diffusion equation modified by thermodynamic requirements, is phenomenological, and each parameter can be measured by independent thermodynamic or diffusion experiments. The details of the theory have been carefully verified in a number of simple systems. It appears that the spinodal mechanism is commonly encountered in clustering reactions in solids and glasses.