| Abstract Scope |
Nanoscale precipitates in steel are known to affect properties by grain refinement and precipitation hardening. One of the challenges is to obtain a statistically meaningful distribution of their size, shape and composition as up to now this has only been possible with tedious, manual analysis.
In this study an electron microscopy workflow is presented where the acquisition of images and chemical information is fully automated, even for overnight analysis on large area samples.
Preparation techniques including carbon replica, electropolishing and focused ion beam will be compared, where the latter two methods create an electron transparent region that maintains orientation of precipitates relative to the grain boundaries.
Instead of characterizing 20 or 30 precipitates per day manually, the automated TEM can process more than 500 precipitates per hour for a typical sample. The actual throughput depends on the number of particles per unit area. |