Combined Analytical And High Resolution Microscopy - A Case Study
The rapid development of n ew metallic and ceramic alloys is making greater demands of our materials characterisation techniques and increasingly when looking at a microstructure we need to know the answers to the following types of questions: a) what are the crystal structures of the constituent phases and inclusions?; b) what are their elemental compositions?; c) is that minor phase crystalline or amorphous?; d) has an element segregated? What is more we need to know this information from all the phases, even the very smallest. Hot-pressed silicon nitride fluxed with yttrium oxide is an example of a newly developed material and we have used it as a case study to determine the capabilities of commercially available equipment for materials characterization. Specifically, we have used a combination of rocking beam micro-diffraction, high resolution dark field imaging, x-ray microanalysis, lattice fringe imaging and D stereo-microscopy to investigate the material. The results of such a comprehensive characterization and the limitations experienced will be described in the presentation.