Tailoring the formation of metastable Mg through interfacial engineering: A phase stability analysis

A classical thermodynamic approach has been used for describing the pseudomorphic growth in Mg/Nb multilayer films. The bi-phase diagram of these films has been predicted theoretically and the predictions were verified experimentally by growing multiple Mg/Nb thin films that were characterized through high resolution transmission electron micrograph (HRTEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement. The good agreement between predictions and experiments shows that the stability of multilayer films can be explained through simple thermodynamic analysis on the competition between bulk and interfacial energies.