| Abstract Scope |
Titanium microstructures span broad spatial scales, necessitating microscopies complementary to SEM/EBSD. Atomic-force microscopy (AFM) offers 3D nanoscale resolution, in air, revealing the nano-topography of oxide film(s) on well-polished Ti64, specifically oxide variations with both phase and alpha-phase orientation. AFM uniquely resolves the a/b lath structure, which standard EBSD at 1µm step cannot. Comparisons illustrate how nanoscale features affect EBSD outputs, including pole figures and confidence indices. At the macro scale, narrowband ellipsometric polarized-light microscopy (CrystalView™ PLM) enables large-area crystallography, here across 4in² on AM DED CP-Ti hydrant plates. CrystalView™ c-axis images show minimal seam discontinuities, enabling accurate statistical analyses of low-frequency features and large AM parts. CrystalView™ can also accommodate large samples, for instance a 3"x5" electropolished Ti64 plate. A small area of this PLM c-axis image is shown to compare well with that obtained by EBSD, which in this case has higher resolution but much smaller image size. |