Observations of microstructural coarsening at cryogenic temperatures, as well as numerous simulations of grain boundary motion that show faster migration at low temperature than at high temperature, have been troubling because they do not follow the expected Arrhenius behavior. This work demonstrates that classical equations, that are not simplified, account for all these oddities and demonstrate that non-Arrhenius behavior can emerge from thermally activated processes. According to this classical model, this occurs when the intrinsic barrier energies of the processes become small, allowing activation at cryogenic temperatures. Additional thermal energy then allows the low energy process to proceed in reverse, so increasing temperature only serves to frustrate the forward motion. This classical form is shown to reconcile and describe a variety of diverse grain boundary migration observations.

在低温下对微观结构粗化的观察，以及对晶界运动的大量模拟表明低温下的迁移速度比高温下的迁移速度更快，这一直令人不安，因为它们不遵循预期的阿累尼乌斯行为。这项工作表明，未简化的经典方程解释了所有这些奇怪之处，并证明非阿伦尼乌斯行为可以从热激活过程中出现。根据这个经典模型，当过程的本征势垒能量变小时，就会发生这种情况，从而允许在低温下激活。然后额外的热能允许低能量过程反向进行，因此增加温度只会阻碍向前运动。