Abstract
The structure and kinetics of the beta CoSn3 phase and its crystallization reaction were studied under nonisothermal conditions using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Four isoconversional methods, including Friedman, Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS), Ozawa-Flynn-Wall (OFW), and Starink, were used to determine the variation in crystallization activation energy E-alpha( T) with temperature. When the temperature increases by 12 K, the crystallization activation energy of beta CoSn3 was reduced by a factor of similar to 6.5 in the Friedman method and by a factor of similar to 4.4 in the remaining methods. The observed behavior of E-alpha as a function of the conversion fraction (a) reveals the multistep mechanism for the formation of the respective phase of beta CoSn3. This study also investigated the effect of different heating rates on the reaction model, g(a), in which the chemical reaction rate and the reactant kinetic energy increased by increasing the heating rate.