Chemical reaction of Ni/Al interface associated with perturbation growth under shock compression

The exothermic reaction of Ni/Al laminates always starts from the interface, and the role of interfacial instability in the shock-induced chemical reaction has not been clarified. This work reports the Richtmyer–Meshkov (RM) instability growth, atomic diffusion, and chemical reaction of Ni/Al interface under shock compression based on atomistic simulations. For shocking from Al to Ni, the interface experiences finite collapse and exhibits weak localized reaction. The diffusion of solid Ni to molten Al will be inhibited due to the formation of NiAl phase, and continuous inter-diffusion occurs with the melting of Ni. For shocking from Ni to Al, a small amount of NiAl structure is formed due to the atomic residue during defect collapse. RM instability growth is observed at higher shock intensity, which significantly promotes the atomic mixing and results in a power-law increase in the number of diffusing atoms. Meanwhile, the chemical reaction propagates rapidly from the vortex to the head of the spike accompanied by the decomposition of many clusters, with the nonlinear development of RM instability. The number and the size of Ni clusters no more satisfy the simple power-law relationship for which we propose an improved power-law distribution. Interestingly, the growth of nanoscale perturbation approximately satisfies the logarithmic law with time, but the linear growth stage is inhibited due to significant inter-diffusion, especially for the small wavelength. Thus, the mixing width and the reaction degree are positively correlated with the initial wavelength in our simulation scale, which is contrary to the RM growth law of the free surface.