History dependent nucleation and growth of the martensitic phase in a magnetic shape memory alloy Ni$_{45}$Co$_{5}$Mn$_{38}$Sn$_{12}$

Abstract

We study through the time evolution of magnetization the low temperature (T) dynamics of the metastable coexisting phases created by traversing different paths in magnetic field (H) and T space in a shape memory alloy system, Ni$_{45}$Co$_{5}$Mn$_{38}$Sn$_{12}$. It is shown that these coexisting phases consisting of a fraction of kinetically arrested austenite phase and remaining fraction of low-T equilibrium martensitic phase undergo a slow relaxation to low magnetization (martensitic) state but with very different thermomagnetic history-dependent rates at the same T and H. We discovered that, when the nucleation of martensitic phase is initiated at much lower T through the de-arrest of the glass like arrested state contrasted with the respective first order transformation (through supercooling at much higher T), then the long time relaxation rate scales with the non-equilibrium phase fraction but has a very weak dependence on T. This is explained on the basis of the H-T path dependent size of the critical radii of the nuclei and the subsequent growth of the equilibrium phase through the motion of the interface.

Title, abstract, introduction, conclusions are modified