Dr. René de Kloe, Applications Specialist EDS, EBSD, EDAX

The job of an applications engineer is to help people. Help sales people to explain to customers what a system can do. Help customers to get the most out of their system and help them to understand their materials better. Help the marketing group with nice examples. And help the development team to devise applications that have not been tried before.

One thing you need in order to be able to help is knowing the EDAX analysis systems inside-out. But the other thing you need is samples. Lots of samples. Every function or analysis tool in the software, regardless if it is for EDS, EBSD, WDS, or XRF is best shown with a specific material or combination of elements or phases. Some of these, like chemical standards with known composition, you have to make or perhaps buy. Others you have to collect yourselves, but from where? A great source for new materials are our customers. People often send me materials to evaluate our systems, or for help on how to best analyse their samples. When I then get permission to keep a bit of the material it goes directly into my collection, together with valuable information on the current analysis requirements in different scientific disciplines.

Eight phase FeSi alloy	Brass with NiMnSi particles

This goes a long way in getting good example materials, but I always keep my eyes open for new interesting things. When I see a metal strip in an anti-theft label in clothing I keep it (after buying the item of course), when a droplet of lead-tin solder falls on the floor, I stick it in the microscope to see if it looks good. I also scrutinize things that get thrown away, ranging from the lid of a vegetable jar to a damaged bellows of an EBSD system. That has given me beautiful cast aluminium samples for EDS mapping, multiphase brass alloys for ChI-Scan EDS-EBSD analysis, and recently an unexpected copper-plated zinc-aluminium-silicon alloy for EBSD phase identification from a broken belt buckle.

Grain structure of a staple	Grain structure of a key ring

Luckily I don’t always have to go dumpster diving to get my example materials. One of my favorite sample mounts contains different types of heavily deformed ferrite, duplex stainless steel, and also martensitic structures. That sounds perhaps complicated, but on the outside the same sample just looks like staples, a paperclip, a key ring, and a screw.

The screw, for example, I polished after doing some DIY work at home and because a certain type of screw kept breaking off when I tightened it, I wanted to take a close look why that happened. It turned out that there were lots of small cracks along the thread, which then also lined up with trails of carbides further inside the screw. That turned out to be a really bad combination and when you tighten the screw, the cracks propagate, connect with the carbide trails and the screw head snaps off. The replacement screws that I used instead had a much finer structure without any cracks and that is what is still holding things together in the house. This shows how microstructures literally shape our daily life. And it also provides a beautiful example to help illustrate the importance of microstructural characterization to new EBSD users.

Weak screw	Strong screw

The huge variation in materials and microstructures makes the collection of demonstration samples the most important tool for an application scientist and from this place I hereby want to thank all people who have given me a piece of some material during my years at EDAX to use to help others.

By the way, I would appreciate it very much if the person who briefly “borrowed” my marble sample last year gives it back soon …