Development of Phase-Field Modeling in Materials Science in China: A Review

Phase-field method, as a powerful and popular approach to predict the mesoscale microstructure evolution in various materials science, provides a bridge from atomic-scale methods to the macroscale and has been widely used at an ever-increasing rate. This paper aims to briefly review the origin, basic idea, and development of phase-field models in a historical manner. The focus is placed on the classical and state-of-the-art applications in China, including liquid–solid, solid–solid, gas–solid, ferroelectrics/ferromagnetics phase transformation, and crack propagation-fracture. After introducing the academic activities in the phase-field community in China, some suggestions for the future development directions of phase-field method are finally mentioned.