Dependence of supercooling of a liquid on its overheating

The degree of overheating of a melt often plays a significant role in determining its supercooling behavior and thus the nucleation and growth of crystals and their qualities. However, the relationship between the level of melt overheating and the resulting degree of supercooling is far from being understood. It is demonstrated that the dependence of the degree of supercooling on the level of melt overheating for bismuth is a function of the duration of melt overheating above its melting point. Depending on the duration, the degree of supercooling can increase either discontinuously or continuously with the level of melt overheating. These observations, which can be linked to the transient evolution of short-range structures during melting and solidification, suggest that the similar observations should also be observable for substances exhibiting substantially different short-range structures in the solid and liquid state.