Characteristic behavior of a side branch in a dendritic crystal growth

This study investigates the characteristic behavior of disturbances on the interface of a needle crystal, Ivantsove parabola, based on an asymptotic analysis as well as a numerical study.

Focusing on tip growth and width behavior, we examine anisotropy in surface energy, initial strength of the disturbances.

It is found that a tip grows as f_tip = exp(Ct) close to the tip region and f_tip exp(Ct^1/2) at far field and wave-length, λ_o, does not show large variation to different initial conditions so that the width of a disturbance behaves as Δy∼y^1/2λ_o.

This constant wave-length, λ_o, suggests that the possibility of the existence of an attractor in λ_o. An evolution of finger competition between two disturbances with different initial strengths is investigated to understand the selection mechanism.