Month: February 2018

Avoid a Distorted View

Dr. Stuart Wright, Senior Scientist EBSD, EDAX

In the world of “fake news” and “alternative facts”, it is important that we dig a little deeper than the headlines to understand the world around us and to avoid a distorted view those in power often want to give us. Ironically, the same is true at the microscale. I recently ran into some work concerning the effects of sample prep on x-ray measurements. It made me reflect on some early work we did to explore the effects of sample prep on EBSD results.

In order to prepare EBSD samples properly it is important to understand that surface finish is not the whole story. It is important that the layer of material sampled by EBSD be distortion free. Charts shown in many metals preparation handbooks clearly show that there can be significant deformation imparted into the sub-surface of a material during preparation. Consider the following chart adapted from a figure in a classic EBSD sample preparation paper: D. Katrakova & F. Mücklich (2001) “Specimen preparation for electron Backscatter Diffraction. Part I: Metals” Praktische Metallographie. 8:547-65. This plot clearly shows why sample prep for EBSD needs to be meticulous.

My longtime colleague, Matt Nowell, did a nice study comparing by grinding two samples, one ground to 240 grit and one to 1200 grit. He then cross-sectioned these samples and carefully prepared the cross-sectioned surfaces. Matt then did OIM scans on the two surfaces. Using a Kernel Average Misorientation (KAM) map, the degree of deformation in the 240 grit sample is clearly more pronounced that in the 1200 grit sample. Matt and I have always wanted to repeat this measurement for more grits and materials but have never found the time to pursue it again.

Many times, students who have asked me “which grinding and/or polishing steps can I skip?” Or, “how many times can I really use a grinding paper?” (I remember as a student we got one paper for each grit for the semester and we would hang them from a wire with clothes pins in the sample prep lab!). Or, “can’t I just do the final grinding step for a longer time and skip the coarser grinding steps?” One thing we’ve learned on our own and in conversations with the sample prep vendors is that the recipes developed with several steps for what intuitively may feel like short times really are the steps that lead to the best results -basically confirming the plot shown above.

The improvement in cameras, image processing and particularly NPAR™ should not be used as an excuse to take shortcuts in sample prep. While it may be possible to get patterns and reasonable maps, are you really looking at the representative microstructure of interest or a distorted version resulting from deformation induced by sample prep?

I believe EBSD has had a positive impact on the metallography community. EBSD has forced us to be more careful in sample preparation over that typically done for light microscopy or even scanning electron microscopy. Hopefully that extra care has resulted in more representative microstructural characterization.

Water, Sand and Salt, and Why We Care About Compounds

Tara Nylese, Global Applications Manager, EDAX

Somewhere around the age of five years old, many of us learn that another way to identify water is by the molecular name, H2O. This usually leads to more questions like: ‘What is H?’, ‘What is O?’, ‘How does that make water?’, ‘Why should I care?’. Over the years, we grow into more advanced chemistry students exploring topics like compound formulas, and we learn that the world we live in is made up of complex associations of combined atoms. A chemical compound is a substance that is composed of two or more chemical elements. The reason that we should care about compounds is that an element such as Oxygen (O) can be very different if it is associated with Hydrogen into H2O to make water, or as SiO2, which is Silicon Dioxide that makes up sand on a beach, or as Fe2O3, which is ferric oxide, loosely known as rust on steel. Therefore, as microanalysts, we should pay close attention to compounds because the elements alone do not always tell us the complete nature of the material we’re analyzing.

Once we grow into an “expert scientist,”* we become deeply entrenched in the details of microanalysis, and we often forget to take a step back to see the big picture. For example, as an EDS analyst, I look at the spectrum below and I think “what a nice sodium peak” or “hmm, am I picking up Al due to scatter at variable pressure?” But unless I’m using it for an introduction to a microscopy and microanalysis student lecture I don’t often simply call it what it is, and that is NaCl, or salt.

Next, we look at the electron image at very low mag and that gives us a better contextual understanding that it is a grain of salt.

When we look back at the spectrum again with a big picture view, we recognize that the main elements present in the spectrum are Na and Cl, and that they make up the compound NaCl, or salt.

In follow up to my recent webinar, I received a lot of questions asking “What are CompoMaps?” and “How can I use CompoMaps?” I was glad to see so much interest in such a valuable routine, and I do hope that users of every level can use this “Compound” view to understand their materials more deeply. To answer the first question, “CompoMaps” is a sophisticated software routine that creates a display of the elemental composition of each pixel. That is, the intensity of the pixel display color is a direct representation of the peak intensity of an element. It is helpful when there is a trace amount of an element, because the routine separates the peak from the background, removing the noise and intensifying the signal. It is perhaps most useful for separating element peaks where there is ambiguity whether there is one element, or another. In the example shown below, I was collecting this data when I happened to get a chance to web connect with an earth sciences professor. After he saw the before and after, he commented that the “after” made much more sense because those two elements would not likely be in combination together in any mineral.

The results here show that Phosphorus in green and Zirconium in purple are definitely located in two different phases.

Before CompoMaps:
After CompoMaps:
Superimposed into one image:
What we didn’t see in the webinar was the Oxygen map, shown here for the first time:
The display shows both with (right) and without (left) the Phosphorus and Zirconium superimposed, and this gives us a better understanding about the compound, since Oxygen is present with these elements. After full investigation of all element maps, we find that the two phases are Ca5(PO4)3F, or fluorapatite and ZrSiO4, or Zircon.

Finally, the answer to the question, “How can I use CompoMaps?”, is easy. This is a routine that EDAX has had in all of our software packages from Genesis to TEAM™ (as Net Maps) and now in APEX™. The routine has been optimized for APEX™ with 64-bit architecture and advanced processing capability, along with an easy to use workflow for results in live-time. So, give it a try and see what you can find!

*My personal opinion is that we should never let ourselves call ourselves experts, lest we forget that there is always something new to learn.