ABSTRACT
In the field of materials science, the interfacial tension between a solid and its melt dictates to a large extent the temperatures at which solids nucleate from their liquids [5,6]. The solid-melt interfacial tension is often important in the determination of the morphology of growth, and may also lead to solidification taking place in preferred crystallographic orientations [7]. When liquid metals migrate to surface cracks in solids, γsl replaces the solid surface tension, γsv, as the effective energy of cohesion for the solid. The value of γsl will usually be considerably lower than γsv so that the strength of the solid is drastically reduced, thereby causing surface embrittlement [8].
