Atomic scale understanding of the role of hydrogen and oxygen segregation in the embrittlement of grain boundaries in a twinning induced plasticity steel

Twinning induced plasticity (TWIP) steels are high strength metallic materials with potential for structural components in e.g. automotive applications. However, they are prone to hydrogen embrittlement (HE) and galvanic corrosion. We investigated the susceptibility of a model Fe 27Mn 0.3C (wt%) TWIP steel towards HE and oxidation at the sub-nanometer scale by atom probe tomography. We measured segregation of hydrogen and oxygen at grain boundaries, which appears to be associated to a strong manganese depletion. Our study suggests a correlation between HE and oxidation mechanisms in TWIP steels, which we argue can combine to favor the previously reported hydrogen enhanced decohesion (HEDE) of grain boundaries

New approach for FIB-preparation of atom probe specimens for aluminum alloys

Site-specific atom probe tomography (APT) from aluminum alloys has been limited by sample preparation issues. Indeed, Ga, which is conventionally used in focused-ion beam (FIB) preparations, has a high affinity for Al grain boundaries and causes their embrittlement. This leads to high concentrations of Ga at grain boundaries after specimen preparation, unreliable compositional analyses and low specimen yield. Here, to tackle this problem, we propose to use cryo-FIB for APT specimen preparation specifically from grain boundaries in a commercial Al-alloy. We demonstrate how this setup, easily implementable on conventional Ga-FIB instruments, is efficient to prevent Ga diffusion to grain boundaries. Specimens were prepared at room temperature and at cryogenic temperature (below approx. 90K) are compared, and we confirm that at room temperature, a compositional enrichment above 15 at.% of Ga is found at the grain boundary, whereas no enrichment could be detected for the cryo-prepared sample. We propose that this is due to the decrease of the diffusion rate of Ga at low temperature. The present results could have a high impact on the understanding of aluminum and Al-alloys

Formation and deformation of hydrides in titanium

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On Open and Strong-Scaling Tools for Atom Probe Crystallography: High-Throughput Methods for Indexing Crystal Structure and Orientation

Volumetric crystal structure indexing and orientation mapping are key data processing steps for virtually any quantitative study of spatial correlations between the local chemistry and the microstructure of a material. For electron and X-ray diffraction methods it is possible to develop indexing tools which compare measured and analytically computed patterns to decode the structure and relative orientation within local regions of interest. Consequently, a number of numerically efficient and automated software tools exist to solve the above characterisation tasks. For atom probe tomography (APT) experiments, however, the strategy of making comparisons between measured and analytically computed patterns is less robust because many APT datasets may contain substantial noise. Given that general enough predictive models for such noise remain elusive, crystallography tools for APT face several limitations: Their robustness to noise, and therefore, their capability to identify and distinguish different crystal structures and orientation is limited. In addition, the tools are sequential and demand substantial manual interaction. In combination, this makes robust uncertainty quantifying with automated high-throughput studies of the latent crystallographic information a difficult task with APT data. To improve the situation, we review the existent methods and discuss how they link to those in the diffraction communities. With this we modify some of the APT methods to yield more robust descriptors of the atomic arrangement. We report how this enables the development of an open-source software tool for strong-scaling and automated identifying of crystal structure and mapping crystal orientation in nanocrystalline APT datasets with multiple phases.Comment: 36 pages, 19 figures, preprin

A liquid metal encapsulation for analyzing porous nanomaterials by atom probe tomography

Analyzing porous (nano)materials by the atom probe tomography has been notoriously difficult. The electrostatic pressure intensifies stress at voids which results in premature failure of the specimen, and the electrostatic field distribution near voids lead to aberrations that are difficult to predict. Here we propose a new encapsulating method for a porous sample using a low-melting-point Bi-In-Sn alloy, known as Fields metal. As a model porous sample, we used single-crystalline wustite following direct hydrogen-reduced into iron. The complete encapsulation is performed using in-situ heating on the stage of the scanning-electron microscope up to approx. 70 Celsius. No visible corrosion nor dissolution of the sample occurred. Subsequently specimens are shaped by focused ion beam milling under cryogenic conditions at -190 Celsius. The proposed approach is versatile, can be applied to provide good quality atom probe datasets from microporous materials

Impurities, or dopants, that is the question

The numerous stories around LK-99 as a possible room-temperature superconductor over the summer of 2023 epitomise that materials are more than a bulk crystallographic structure or an expected composition. Like all materials, those at the core of technologies for the energy generation transition, including batteries, catalysts or quantum materials draw their properties from a hierarchy of microstructural features where impurities can dramatically influence the outcomes. As we move towards a circular economy, the recycling of materials will inevitably create fluxes of increasingly impure materials, generating new challenges for fabricating materials with controlled properties. Here, we provide our perspective on how high-end microscopy and microanalysis have helped us to understand relationships between synthesis, processing and microstructure, avoiding imprecise or even erroneous interpretations on the origins of the properties from a range of materials. We highlight examples of how unexpected impurities and their spatial distribution on the nanoscale can be turned into an advantage to define pathways for synthesis of materials with new and novel sets of physical properties