Containerless Heating Process of a Deeply Undercooled Metal Droplet by Electrostatic Levitation

We present the containerless heating process of a deeply undercooled metal droplet by electrostatic levitation. The problem of surface charge loss in the heating process is discussed and specific formulas are given to describe the basic process of charge supplement by the photoelectric and thermoelectric effects. The pure metal zirconium is used to be melted and solidified to analyze the heating process. The temperature–time curve clearly shows the features including melting, undercooling, recalescence and solid-state phase transformation.