text: Above approximately 900 °C a typical low-carbon steel is composed entirely of austenite, a high-temperature phase of iron that has a cubic close-packed crystal structure. On cooling, it tends to transform into a mixture of phases, ferrite and cementite, depending on the exact chemical composition. A steel of eutectoid composition will under equilibrium conditions transform into  pearlite – an interleaved mixture of ferrite and cementite (FeC). In addition to the thermodynamic considerations indicated by the phase diagram, the phase transformations in steel are heavily influenced by the chemical kinetics. This is because the diffusion of iron atoms becomes difficult below about 600 °C under typical processing conditions. As a consequence, a complex array of microstructures occurs when the atomic mobility is limited. This leads to the complexity of steel microstructures which are strongly influenced by the cooling rate. This can be illustrated by a continuous cooling transformation (CCT) diagram which plots the time required to form a phase when a sample is cooled at a specific rate thus showing regions in time-temperature space from which the expected phase fractions can be deduced for a given thermal cycle.
  If the steel is cooled slowly or isothermally transformed at elevated temperatures, the microstructure obtained will be closer to equilibrium, containing for example of allotriomorphic ferrite, cementite and pearlite.  However, the transformation from austenite to pearlite is a time-dependent reconstructive reaction which requires the large scale movement of the iron and carbon atoms. While the interstitial carbon diffuses readily even at moderate temperatures the self-diffusion of iron becomes extremely slow at temperatures below 600 °C until, for all practical purposes, it stops. As a consequence, a rapidly cooled steel may reach a temperature where pearlite can no longer form despite the reaction being incomplete and the remaining austenite being thermodynamically unstable.
  Austenite that is cooled sufficiently rapidly to avoid higher temperature transformations, can form martensite, without any diffusion of either iron or carbon, by the deformation of the austenite's face-centred crystal structure into a distorted body-centred tetragonal or body-centred cubic structure. This non-equilibrium phase can only form at low temperatures, where the driving force for the reaction is sufficient to overcome the considerable lattice strain imposed by the transformation. The transformation is essentially time-independent with the phase fraction depending only the degree of cooling below the critical martensite start temperature.  Further, it occurs without the diffusion of either substitutional or interstitial atoms and so martensite inherits the composition of the parent austenite.
  Bainite occupies a region between these two process in a temperature range where iron self-diffusion is limited but there is insufficient driving force to form martensite. The bainite, like martensite, grows without diffusion but some of the carbon then partitions into any residual austenite, or precipitates as cementite.  A further distinction is often made between so-called lower-bainite, which forms at temperatures closer to the martensite start temperature, and upper-bainite which forms at higher temperatures. This distinction arises from the diffusion rates of carbon at the temperature at which the bainite is forming. If the temperature is high then the carbon will diffuse rapidly away from the newly formed ferrite and form carbides in the carbon-enriched residual austenite between the ferritic plates leaving them carbide-free. At low temperatures the carbon will diffuse more sluggishly and may precipitate before it can leave the bainitic ferrite.  There is some controversy over the specifics of bainite's transformation mechanism; both theories are represented below.