Atom movement : Diffusion and mass transport in solids

Finally, a miracle has occured : Dr. S. J. Roth man of Argonne National Laboratory, not only a fluent francophone but also a scientist who himself has made enormous contributions to the field of solid-state diffusion, has made an English-language translation of Professor Philibert's 1985 text, now entitled "ATOM MOVEMENTS". Moreover, the new edition has been updated in important ways and includes an extensive set of extremely practical homework exercises to help the serious reader master the field in a professional manner. This, if 1 may steal aline from Shakespeare, is "...a consummation devoutly to be wished."

The most wonderful aspects of the original Adda-Philibert "bible" are faithfully preserved in Professor Philibert's French-language 1985 book and again in this English-language edition. This is a work of love by a scientist who understands the field thoroughly and deeply, from its fundamental atomistic aspects to the most practical of its "real-world" applications. The selection of topics is superb, and the treatment of each subject is thorough and complete, appropriate in level for advanced undergraduate or graduate students, as weil as active research workers, who demand a thorough grounding in this vital area.

This book was written to remedy a deficiency: at this time, an elementary text on diffusion in solids does not exist either in French or in English. On the other hand, literature for specialists at an advanced level is abundant; during the last fifteen years, a number of colloquia and workshops have resulted in publications, many of which resemble review articles. Still, there is no first book that would prepare a graduate student or beginning researcher to use these review articles or the originalliterature fruitfully.

The present book is the result of diverse courses on diffusion. It is intended to give as complete an overview as possible of diffusion in solid media, while relating the processes of diffusion to both their physical bases and their applications. In this spirit, certain fundamental aspects of these processes, such as the calculation of correlation factors or the theory of the atomic jump, which require long mathematical derivations, have been considered only on an elementary level, with the important results given without proof. However, when a simple approach was possible, the important relations have been derived, but concentrating more on the physics than on the mathematical formalism.

A series of a real situations is covered in this account, from self-diffusion of radiotracers to the more complex cases of mass flow under chemical or thermal gradients or under electric fields, or diffusion in structures of lower dimensionality (surfaces and interfaces). In ali these analyses, no category of materials was favored ; metals, ionie crystals, oxides, and semiconductors ali had their turn. Only polymers were not specifically touched. One chapter is specifically devoted to techniques for studying diffusion, including methods of numerical simulation, and a last and long chapter gives a number of metallurgical phenomena in which diffusion plays a fundamental role.