| Summary: | The diffusion of atoms is an inherent feature of matter, and the rules which describe the phenomenon are important from both the purely practical and the theoretical perspectives: it is a major rate-controlling process in phase transformations, crystal growth, recrystallization and recovery, creep, sintering, surface treatment and many other situations. Being typically a non-equilibrium macroscopic phenomenon, diffusion can be properly described in terms of the thermodynamics of irreversible processes. At the same time, phenomenological diffusion characteristics represent the mean values of mi.
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