Figure 2: Kinetic profile of liquid-to-crystal phase transition and phase diagram of TiO₂.

(a) Time-dependent growth of the fraction crystallized obtained from the increased diffraction intensities. Single-pulse diffraction images are chosen and shown to be representative of time points before, during and after the processes are completed. The fraction versus time in log scale gives the kinetic profile of the structural transformation of TiO₂ nanofilm. Circles are obtained from the average of individual measurements and error bars indicate the s.d. (b) Phase diagram: solid and liquid TiO₂ against temperature based on thermal experiments. The distinct processes are labelled as α, β and γ to make the correspondence with our kinetic mapping. Note that the x axis for temperature decreases from left to right, and that the temperature range of our experiment is indicated by the dotted lines. The solid curve is the theoretically obtained behaviour (see text).