  Rapid solidification experiments on thin film aluminum samples reveal the
presence of lattice orientation gradients within crystallizing grains. To study
this phenomenon, a single-component phase-field crystal (PFC) model that
captures the properties of solid, liquid, and vapor phases is proposed to model
pure aluminium quantitatively. A coarse-grained amplitude representation of
this model is used to simulate solidification in samples approaching micrometer
scales. The simulations reproduce the experimentally observed orientation
gradients within crystallizing grains when grown at experimentally relevant
rapid quenches. We propose a causal connection between formation of defects and
orientation gradients.
