product management

How to Get a Good Answer in a Timely Manner

Shawn Wallace, Applications Engineer, EDAX

One of the joys of my job is troubleshooting issues and ensuring you acquire the best results to advance your research. Sometimes, it requires additional education to help users understand a concept. Other times, it requires an exchange of numerous emails. At the end of the day, our goal is not just to help you, but to ensure you get the right information in a timely manner.

For any sort of EDS related question, we almost always want to look at a spectrum file. Why? There is so much information hidden in the spectrum that we can quickly point out any possible issues. With a single spectrum, we can quickly see if something was charging, tilted, or shadowed (Figure 1). We can even see weird things like beam deceleration caused by a certain imaging mode (Figure 2). With most of these kinds of issues, it is common to run into major quant related problems. Any quant problems should always start with a spectrum.

Figure 1. The teal spectrum shows a strange background versus what a normal spectrum (red) should look like for a material.

This background information tells us that the sample was most likely shadowed and that rotating the sample to face towards the detector may give better results.

Figure 2. Many microscopes can decelerate the beam to help with imaging. This deceleration is great for imaging but can cause EDS quant issues. Therefore, we recommend reviewing the spectrum up front to reduce the number of emails to troubleshoot this issue.

To save the spectrum, right-click in the spectrum window, then click on Save (Figure 3). From there, save the file with a descriptive name, and send it off to the applications group. These spectrum files also include other metadata, such as amp time, working distance, and parameters that give us so many clues to get to the bottom of possible issues.

Figure 3. Saving a spectrum in APEX™ is intuitive. Right-click in the area and a pop-up menu will allow you to save the spectrum wherever you want quickly.

For information on EDS backgrounds and the information they hold, I suggest watching Dr. Jens Rafaelsen’s Background Modeling and Non-Ideal Sample Analysis webinar.

The actual image file can also help us confirm most of the above.

Troubleshooting EBSD can be tricky since the issue could be from sample prep, indexing, or other issues. To begin, it’s important to rule out any variances associated with sample preparation. Useful information to share includes a description of the sample, as well as the step-by-step instructions used to prepare the sample. This includes things like the length of time, pressure, cloth material, polishing compound material, and even the direction of travel. The more details, the better!

Now, how do I know it is a sample prep problem? If the pattern quality is low at long exposure times (Figure 4) or the sample looks very rough, it is probably related to sample preparation (Figure 4). That being said, there could be non-sample prep related issues too.

Figure 4. This pattern is probably not indexable on its own. Better preparation of the sample surface is necessary to index and map this sample correctly.

For general sample prep guidelines, I would highly suggest Matt Nowell’s Learn How I Prepare Samples for EBSD Analysis webinar.

Indexing problems can be challenging to troubleshoot without a full data set. How do I know my main issues could be related to indexing? If indexing is the source, a map often appears to be very speckled or just black due to no indexing results. For this kind of issue, full data sets are the way to go. By full, I mean patterns and OSC files. These files can be exported out of TEAM™/APEX™. They are often quite large, but there are ways available to move the data quickly.

For the basics of indexing knowledge, I suggest checking out my latest webinar, Understanding and Troubleshooting the EDAX Indexing Routine and the Hough Parameters. During this webinar, we highlight attributes that indicate there is an issue with the data set, then dive into the best practices for troubleshooting them.

As for camera set up, this is a dance between the microscope settings, operator’s requirements, and the camera settings. In general, more electrons (higher current) allow the experiment to go faster and cover more area. With older CCD based cameras, understanding this interaction was key to good results. With the newer Velocity™ cameras based on CMOS technology, the dance is much simpler. If you are having difficulty while trying to optimize an older camera, the Understanding and Optimizing EBSD Camera Settings webinar can help.

So how do you get your questions answered fast? Bury us with information. More information lets us dive deeper into the data to find the root cause in the first email, and avoids a lengthy back and forth exchange of emails. If possible, educate yourself using the resources we have made available, be it webinars or training courses. And always, feel free to reach out to my colleagues and me at edax.applications@ametek.com!

What’s in a Name?

Matt Nowell, EBSD Product Manager, EDAX

The Globe Theatre

I recently had the opportunity to attend the RMS EBSD meeting, which was held at the National Physics Lab outside of London. It was a very enjoyable meeting, with lotsof nice EBSD developments. While I was there, I was able to take in a bit of London as well. One of the places I visited was the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. While I didn’t get a chance to see a show here (I saw School of Rock instead), it did get me thinking about one of the Bard’s more famous lines, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet” from Romeo and Juliet.

I bring this up because as EBSD Product Manager for EDAX, one of my responsibilities is to help name new products. Now my academic background is in Materials Science and Engineering, so understanding how to best name a product has been an interesting adventure.

TSL

The earliest product we had was the OIM™ system, which stood for Orientation Imaging Microscopy. The name came from a paper introducing EBSD mapping as a technique. At the time, we were TSL, which stood for TexSem Laboratories, which was short for Texture in an SEM. Obviously, we were into acronyms. We used a SIT (Silicon Intensified Target) camera to capture the EBSD patterns. We did the background processing with a DSP-2000 (Digital Signal Processor). We controlled the SEM beam with an MSC box (Microscope System Control).

Our first ‘mapped’ car.

For our next generator of products, we branched out a bit. Our first digital Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) camera was called the DigiView, as it was our first digital camera for capturing EBSD patterns instead of analog signals. Our first high-speed CCD camera was called Hikari. This one may not be as obvious, but it was named after the high-speed train in Japan, as Suzuki-san (our Japanese colleague) played a significant role in the development of this camera. Occasionally, we could find the best of both worlds. Our phase ID product was called Delphi. In Greek mythology, Delphi was the oracle who was consulted for important decisions (could you describe phase ID any better than that?). It also stood for Diffracted Electrons for Phase Identification.

Among our more recent products, PRIAS™ stands for Pattern Region of Interest Analysis System. Additionally, though, it is meant to invoke the hybrid use of the detector as both an EBSD detector and an imaging system. TEAM™ stands for Texture and Elemental Analysis System, which allowed us to bridge together EDS and EBSD analysis in the same product. NPAR™ stands for Neighbor Pattern Averaging and Reindexing, but I like this one as it sounds like I named it because of my golf game.
I believe these names have followed in the tradition of things like lasers (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), and CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). It generates a feeling of being part of the club, knowing what these names mean.

Velocity™ EBSD Camera

The feedback I get though, is that our product names should tell us what the product does. I don’t buy into this 100%, as my Honda Pilot isn’t a self-driving car, but it is the first recommendation on how to name a product (https://aytm.com/blog/how-to-name-a-product-10-tips-for-product-naming-success/). Following this logic, our latest and world’s fastest EBSD camera is the Velocity™. It sounds fast, and it is.

Of course, even when using this strategy, there can be some confusion. Is it tEBSD (Transmission EBSD) or TKD (Transmission Kikuchi Diffraction)? Does HR-EBSD give us better spatial resolution? Hopefully as we continue to name new products, we can make our answer clear.

A Lot of Excitement in the Air!

Sia Afshari, Global Marketing Manager, EDAX

After all these years I still get excited about new technologies and their resulting products, especially when I have had the good fortune to play a part in their development. As I look forward to 2019, there are new and exciting products on the horizon from EDAX, where the engineering teams have been hard at work innovating and enhancing capabilities across all product lines. We are on the verge of having one of our most productive years for product introduction with new technologies expanding our portfolio in electron microscopy and micro-XRF applications.

Our APEX™ software platform will have a new release early this year with substantial feature enhancements for EDS, to be followed by EBSD capabilities later in 2019. APEX™ will also expand its wings to uXRF providing a new GUI and advanced quant functions for bulk and multi-layer analysis.

Our OIM Analysis™ EBSD software will also see a major update with the addition of a new Dictionary Indexing option.

A new addition to our TEM line will be a 160 mm² detector in a 17.5 mm diameter module that provides an exceptional solid angle for the most demanding applications in this field.

Elite T EDS System

Velocity™, EDAX’s low noise CMOS EBSD camera, provides astonishing EBSD performance at greater than 3000 fps with high indexing on a range of materials including deformed samples.

Velocity™ EBSD Camera

Last but not least, being an old x-ray guy, I can’t help being so impressed with the amazing EBSD patterns we are collecting from a ground-breaking direct electron detection (DED) camera with such “Clarity™” and detail, promising a new frontier for EBSD applications!
It will be an exciting year at EDAX and with that, I would like to wish you all a great, prosperous year!

Visas, Border Crossings and Beers; Oh My!

Dr. Bruce Scruggs, Product Manager XRF, EDAX

It’s been a successful and busy year for EDAX’s XRF product lines and business. And with that, there’s a lot of traveling. I’m in the midst of filing a work visa application for a colleague and have determined that my absolute favorite work visa application as a US citizen is to Malaysia. It’s even more painful than having a snippy conversation with a Canadian border agent at the Montreal airport after flying back from Taiwan. (By the way, beer in Taiwan is light and forgettable.)

I’m going to go on about the Malaysian visa, but let’s just take a short diversion to this Canadian border agent. I was supposed to transit through Montreal airport but I missed my connecting flight. The airline was going to put me up for the night at a hotel near the airport. I had already filled out the purpose of my trip as “Business” on my Canadian landing card. I was returning from a business trip after all and there was no option for “Transit” as any sensible landing card would have. It wouldn’t have mattered a lick to the Canadian border agent monitoring the Transit Desk because I wasn’t going to Canada. I would have been transiting through Canada. But, instead, I was standing in front of the border agent controlling the mighty turnstile to Canada and my landing card said the purpose of my trip to Canada was “business”. I tried to explain that I wasn’t going to Canada. I was just transiting through Canada and had to stay at a local hotel overnight because of a missed flight, but the agent wasn’t having any of that. The landing card said that this was a “BUSINESS” trip and I was trying to enter “CANADA” and we needed to have a very grand discussion about the “BUSINESS” I was going to be doing in Canada. The agent was gesturing beyond the turnstile in the general direction of outside of the airport as he said “CANADA”. My voice began to rise as we went back and forth over the circumstances of our meeting at 10PM following my return flight from Taiwan. Finally, a voice in my head said “STOP! THIS IS NOT WORKING!”. Something my Mother said about kitchen condiments and flies crossed my mind. I lowered my voice. I took a deep breath. I told the agent that I had made a mistake on the card. I had missed my connecting flight home and I would have to stay at a local hotel overnight. I wouldn’t be doing any business in Canada and would be leaving in less than 14 hours. I was truly very sorry for the mistake on my landing card. “WELCOME TO CANADA!”, the agent said with another grand gesture in the direction of the airport exit. A quiet little voice in my head said “Whatever! You petty little dictator …” as I bit my lip. By the way, Canada has a lot of good beers. My favorite small breweries in Quebec include Brasserie Belgh Brasse, Microbrasserie Alchimiste, Microbrasserie Pit Caribou and Microbrasserie Charlevoix.

Anyway, back to the work visa for Malaysia. Malaysia is torture by a thousand paper cuts! All told, you need to submit a copy of your passport from front cover to back cover; a resume; a copy of your diploma; a job description; a work schedule; an employment verification letter confirming that no expenses for this person will be borne by the Malaysian Government; and an invitation letter. And don’t forget a recent passport photo. In JPG format. And make sure the diploma is provided in color. And the passport scan has to be in color, too! Oh, and the passport scan file is too large for our e-mail system. Can you upload that to Dropbox? Oh, you need to scan ALL the pages of the passport including the front and back covers. And which Malaysian consulate will you go to get the visa stamped in your passport? I hope you live around LA, DC or NYC. The staff at the DC consulate were very helpful. Otherwise you need to find a visa expeditor that will go to the Malaysian consulate for you.

Once this was all completed, I got the visa stamp – nothing says “Welcome to Malaysia” like:

But, once you get to Malaysia, one of my favorite Malaysian brewed beers is Anchor. Bon voyage!

Building an EBSD Sample

Matt Nowell, EBSD Product Manager, EDAX

Father’s Day is this weekend, and I like to think my kids enjoy having a material scientist for a father. They have a go-to resource for math questions, science projects are full of fun and significant digits, and when they visit the office they get to look at bugs and Velcro with the SEM. I’m always up to take them to museums to see crystals and airplanes and other interesting things as we travel around. That’s one way we have tried to make learning interactive and engaging. Another activity we have recently tried is 3D printing. This has allowed us to find or create 3D digital models of things and then print them out at home. Here are some fun examples of our creations.
At home we are printing with plastics, but in the Material Science world there is a lot of interest and development in printing with metals as well. This 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is rapidly developing as a new manufacturing approach for both prototyping and production in a range of industries including aerospace and medical implants. Instead of melting plastics with a heated nozzle, metal powders are melted together with lasers or electron beams to create these 3D shapes that cannot be easily fabricated by traditional approaches.

In these applications, it is important to have reliable and consistent properties and performance. To achieve this, the microstructure of the metals must be both characterized and understood. EBSD is an excellent tool for this requirement.

The microstructures that develop during 3D printing are very interesting. Here is an example from a Ni-based superalloy created using Selective Laser Melting (SLM). This image shows a combined Image Quality and Orientation (IQ + IPF) Map, with the orientations displayed relative to the sample normal direction. Rather than equiaxed grains with easily identifiable twin boundaries, as are common with many nickel superalloys, this image shows grains that are growing vertically in the structure. This helps indicate the direction of heat flow during the manufacturing process. Understanding the local conditions during melting and solidification helps determine the final grain structure.
In some materials, this heating and cooling will cause not only melting, but also phase transformations that also affect the microstructure. Ti-6Al-4V (or Ti64) is one of the most common Titanium alloys used in both aerospace and biomedical applications, and there has been a lot of work done developing additive manufacturing methods for this alloy. Here is an IQ + IPF map from a Ti64 alloy built for a medical implant device.
At high temperatures, this alloy transforms into a Body-Centered Cubic (or BCC) structure called the Beta phase. As the metal cools, it transforms into a Hexagonal Closed Pack (HCP) structure, called the Alpha phase. This HCP microstructure develops as packets of similarly oriented laths as seen above. However, not all the Beta phase transforms. Here is an IQ + Phase EBSD map, where the Alpha phase is red and the Beta phase is blue. Small grains of the Beta phase are retained from the higher temperature structure.
If we show the orientations of the Beta grains only, we see how the packets relate to the original Beta grains that were present at high temperatures.
The rate of cooling will also influence the final microstructure. In this example, pieces of Ti64 were heated and held above the Beta transition temperature. One sample was then cooled in air, and another was quenched in water. The resulting microstructures are shown below. The first is the air-cooled sample.
The second is the water-cooled sample.

Clearly there is a significant difference in the resulting structure based on the cooling rate alone. As I imagine the complex shapes built with additive manufacturing, understanding both the local heating and cooling conditions will be important for optimization of both the structure and the properties.

Materials Selection While Black Friday Shopping

Matt Nowell, Product Manager EBSD, EDAX

I’m writing this blog the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday, and having survived a Black Friday shopping adventure that started just a couple of hours after finishing the turkey last Thursday. While waiting in line for the doors to open and the tryptophan to wear off, I worked on plotting a strategy through the store to find a robotic vacuum cleaner, an Amazon Echo, some LED lights for outside, and the latest Minecraft toy for my youngest son. As the clock ticked towards 6 P.M., I felt confident in my plan and ready to go.

When the doors opened, and folks started streaming in, I grabbed a cart. This is always a tricky decision, as it immediately limits your mobility and possible escape routes. However, I knew ironically that the vacuum robot wasn’t going to push himself around quite yet. With cart in hand, I had to take a wider path, so I went a circuitous route to avoid the anticipated crowds, and ended up in housewares near where I expected the robot to be.

The first thing that caught my eye though wasn’t the vacuum cleaners, or the shiny Christmas plates, it was the cooking pans. It wasn’t the color, or size, or even price that piqued my interest, it was the material on the label: Titanium.

Now I’m no gourmet chef, but I generally don’t think of Titanium as a material used for pans. I’m more familiar with its applications in aerospace engine applications, in medical implants (see https://edaxblog.com/2014/01/22/bringing-oim-analysis-closer-to-home/), and in golf clubs. I’ve certainly polished more Titanium samples than I want to remember. Seeing these Titanium pans, it got me thinking about material selection, how material scientists must balance different materials properties (and cost) to match a material with an application, and where Titanium fits in the world of cooking.

One of my favorite cookbooks is “The Food Lab”, by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, which has the sub-title “Better Home Cooking Through Science”. I’ve enjoyed reading this book because the author systematically tackles questions like “Is New York pizza better because of the water?” using the Scientific Method, and writes humorously about the results as well as providing delicious recipes. I’ve also taken to following him on Twitter (@TheFoodLab), and a recent post shows the pictures, (shown here as Figure 1), using an Infrared (IR) camera, of skillets made of different materials.

Figure 1. Heat distribution in pans made of different materials.

I found it a fascinating picture visualizing the heat distribution, derived from the thermal conductivity of the materials. Stainless steel is non-reactive, so you can cook anything in it. However, it doesn’t have the greatest thermal conductivity. Cast iron has a similar issue, and takes a while to warm up but once it’s hot, it stays hot, which is great for searing meat. Aluminum has better thermal conductivity, but also soft, scratchable, and can react with some foods. Copper is another material with excellent thermal conductivity, but it is reactive to certain foods. When confronted with these types of property challenges, material scientists like the best of both worlds, so composite pans have been made where copper and/or aluminum are sandwiched with steel to try and combine thermal performance with a non-reactive surface.

So what advantages does Titanium bring to this application? As with the aerospace and recreational applications, Titanium has a good strength to weight ratio. It’s lighter than steel and stronger than aluminum, as well as being corrosion-resistant. This means it’s the lightest cookware you can buy. Not necessarily the most important feature in the kitchen, but it does have value for cookware designed for camping.

All this thinking about optimization of thermal conductivity made me think about work done on thermoelectric materials. These materials convert a temperature differential into an electrical potential. Unlike these cooking pans, these materials want to minimize thermal conductivity while maximizing electrical conductivity. This is an interesting challenge. Thermoelectric properties can be optimized by increasing grain boundary density to disrupt phonon heat transfer. Figure 2 shows an EBSD IPF map of a Bismuth Telluride thermoelectric material that was made by shock-wave consolidation. This manufacturing process was investigated as a way to consolidate thermoelectric powders while retaining the nanostructure. More information can be found in our paper at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11664-011-1878-4.

Figure 2. EBSD IPF map of a Bismuth Telluride thermoelectric material that was made by shock-wave consolidation

In the end, I decided not to buy a pan, but I did get the robot vacuum cleaner. I look forward to asking Alexa EBSD-related questions, just to see what happens. I also hope Santa brings me something that is microstructurally interesting, that perhaps I’ll use in my next blog.

A Bit of Background Information

Dr. Jens Rafaelsen, Applications Engineer, EDAX

Any EDS spectrum will have two distinct components; the characteristic peaks that originate from transitions between the states of the atoms in the sample and the background (Bremsstrahlung) which comes from continuum radiation emitted from electrons being slowed down as they move through the sample. The figure below shows a carbon coated galena sample (PbS) where the background is below the dark blue line while the characteristic peaks are above.

Some people consider the background an artefact and something to be removed from the spectrum (either through electronics filtering or by subtracting it) but in the TEAM™ software we apply a model based on Kramer’s law that looks as follows:where E is the photon energy, N(E) the number of photons, ε(E) the detector efficiency, A(E) the sample self-absorption, E0 the incident beam energy, and a, b, c are fit parameters¹.

This means that the background is tied to the sample composition and detector characteristic and that you can actually use the background shape and fit/misfit as a troubleshooting tool. Often if you have a bad background, it’s because the sample doesn’t meet the model requirements or the data fed to the model is incorrect. The example below shows the galena spectrum where the model has been fed two different tilt conditions and an overshoot of the background can easily be seen with the incorrect 45 degrees tilt. So, if the background is off in the low energy range, it could be an indication that the surface the spectrum came from was tilted, in which case the quant model will lose accuracy (unless it’s fed the correct tilt value).


This of course means that if your background is off, you can easily spend a long time figuring out what went wrong and why, although it often doesn’t matter too much. To get rid of this complexity we have included a different approach in our APEX™ software that is meant for the entry level user. Instead of doing a full model calculation we apply a Statistics-sensitive Non-linear Iterative Peak-clipping (SNIP) routine². This means that you will always get a good background fit though you lose some of the additional information you get from the Bremsstrahlung model. The images below show part of the difference where the full model includes the steps in the background caused by sample self-absorption while the SNIP filter returns a flat background.

So, which one is better? Well, it depends on where the question is coming from. As a scientist, I would always choose a model where the individual components can be addressed individually and if something looks strange, there will be a physical reason for it. But I also understand that a lot of people are not interested in the details and “just want something that works”. Both the Bremsstrahlung model and the SNIP filter will produce good results as shown in the table below that compares the quantification numbers from the galena sample.

While there’s a slight difference between the two models, the variation is well within what is expected based on statistics and especially considering that the sample is a bit oxidized (as can be seen from the oxygen peak in the spectrum). But the complexity of the SNIP background is significantly reduced relative to the full model and there’s no user input, making it the better choice for the novice analyst of infrequent user.

¹ F. Eggert, Microchim Acta 155, 129–136 (2006), DOI 10.1007/s00604-006-0530-0
² C.G. RYAN et al, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research 934 (1988) 396-402

What Kind of Leaves Are These?

Dr. Bruce Scruggs, XRF Product Manager, EDAX

This year is shaping up to be an interesting year for travel. Five countries and counting, and I’m not even including a stopover in Texas. The last trip was to Brazil. Beautiful country. But, there’s a reason you see snack and beverage vendors roaming the side of the highways in Rio and Sao Paulo..…

I started out with a micro-XRF workshop at the Center for Mineral Technology at the Federal University at Rio de Janeiro. We were working out of the Gemological Research Laboratory with Dr. Jurgen Schnellrath. At the end of the technical presentations, we analyzed some various pieces of jewelry that participants from the workshop brought. I must admit that this makes me a bit nervous to analyze anything with unforeseen sentimental value and I refuse to analyze engagement and wedding rings. A large pair of blue sapphire earrings turned out to be glass. (Purchased at a garage sale at a garage sale price. So, no big surprise …) Another smaller set of blue sapphire earrings were found to be natural sapphires accompanied by a sigh of relief from the owner. (They came from a reputable jewelry shop with a reputable jewelry shop price.)

Gold leaf “Gold leaf'” embedded in resin

At the end, we analyzed what was termed “gold leaf” jewelry, i.e. a ring and a pair of earrings. The style of these pieces was thin gold leaf foil embedded in resin. The owner was one of the younger students in the lab and she had purchased the jewelry herself from a relatively well-known designer’s collection. The goal was to measure for the presence of gold. Since the gold leaf was embedded in resin, XRF was the ideal tool to measure the pieces non-destructively. The jewelry also had some rather odd topography at times given the surrounding resin, but the Orbis had no problem to target the gold leaf given the co-axial geometry of the exciting X-ray and video imaging. I would have liked to have used the excuse that we couldn’t target the sample accurately because of XRF system geometry. There was no gold. Copper / Zinc alloy. That was it. She had paid about $30 US for the earrings and she said she felt cheated. I kept thinking “Cheated? Maybe … live a little, wait until you buy a house!” Later, I was searching the internet looking for a technical definition for “gold leaf”. I knew I was onto something when I found a webpage that said that gold leaf was “traditionally” 22K gold thin foil used for gilding. The page later described modern Copper/Zinc alloy metal leaf “… offering the same rich look of gold leaf, but at a fraction of the price….” Apparently, this metal leaf can be found at art stores. Who knew?

From there, we went on to the state of Sao Paulo and did a workshop at the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture at the University of Sao Paulo. During the workshop, some of the students gave presentations on their work. I saw a very interesting experimental setup with live plants being measured in the Orbis. The plant’s roots were placed in a water bath doped with various forms of minerals or fertilizers. The whole plant, roots, stem, leaves, was then inserted into the Orbis and the stem was measured to monitor the uptake time for the relevant components in the bath. The plants could be moved in and out of the chamber to monitor the uptake over extended periods of time and over various portions of the plant.

On the way to the Sao Paulo airport, I had the pleasure of sitting in the longest traffic jam I have ever endured with the monotony being broken by roaming snack and beverage vendors. It was quite the sight to watch the peanut vendors carrying propane fueled peanut warmers traversing the lane dividers on the highway with the occasional motorcycle speeding between the cars along the same lane dividers.
Tip for next time … buy the Brazilian produced chocolate before going to the airport. The selection at the airport is rather limited and you never know when you may be having more fun than humans should be allowed to have watching motorcycles and peanut hawkers.

My New Lab Partner

Matt Nowell, EBSD Product Manager, EDAX

It has been an exciting month here in our Draper Utah lab, as we have received and installed our new FEI Teneo FEG SEM. We are a small lab, focusing on EBSD development and applications, and without a loading dock, so timing is critical when scheduling the delivery. So, 3 months ago, we looked at the calendar to pick a day with sunshine and without snow. Luckily, we picked well.

Figure 1: Our new SEM coming off the truck.

Once we got the new instrument up and running, of course the next step was to start playing with it. This new SEM has a lot more imaging detectors than our older SEM, so I wanted to see what I could see with it. I chose a nickel superalloy turbine blade with a thermal barrier coating, as it had many phases for imaging and microanalysis. The first image I collected was with the Everhart-Thornley Detector (ETD). For each image shown, I relied on the auto contrast and brightness adjustment to optimize the image.

Figure 2: ETD image

With imaging, contrast is information. The contrast in this image shows phase contrast. On the left, gamma/gamma prime contrast is visible in the Nickel superalloy while different distinct regions of the barrier coating are seen towards the right. The next image I collected was with the Area Backscatter Detector (ABS). This is a detector that is positioned under the pole piece for imaging. With this detector, I can use the entire detector, the inner annular portion of the detector, or any of three regions towards the outer perimeter of the detector.

Figure 3: ABS Detector image.

I tried each of the different options, and I selected the inner annular ring portion of the detector. Each option provided similar contrast as seen in Figure 3, but I went with this based on personal preference. The contrast is like the ETD contrast is Figure 2. I also compared with the imaging options using the detector in Concentric Backscatter (CBS) mode, where 4 different concentric annular detectors are available.

Figure 4: T1 Detector (a-b mode).

My next image used the T1 detector, which to my understanding is an in-lens detector. In this mode, I selected the a – b mode, so the final image is obtained by subtracting the image from the b portion of the detector from the a portion of the detector. I selected this image because the resultant contrast is reversed from the first couple of images. Here phases that were bright are now dark, and detail within the phases is suppressed.

Figure 5: T2 Detector.

My final SEM image was collected with the T2 detector, another in-lens detector option. Here we see the same general phase contrast, but the contrast range is more limited and the detail within regions is again suppressed.

I have chosen to show this set of images to illustrate how different detectors, and their positioning, can generate different images from the area, and that the contrast/information obtained with each image can change. Now I have done a cursory interpretation of the image contrast, but a better understanding may come from reading the manual and knowing the effects of the imaging parameters used.

Figure 6: Always Read the Manual!

Of course, I’m an EBSD guy, so I also want to compare this to what I can get using our TEAM™ software with Hikari EBSD detectors. One unique feature we have in our software is PRIAS™, which uses the EBSD detector as an imaging system. With the default imaging mode, it subsets the phosphor screen image into 25 different ROI imaging detectors, and generates an image from each when the beam is scanned across the area of interest. Once these images are collected, they can be reviewed, mixed, added, subtracted, and colored to show the contrast of interest, similar to the SEM imaging approach described above.

The 3 most common contrasts we see with PRIAS™ are phase, orientation, and topographic. To capture these, we also have a mode where 3 pre-defined regional detectors are collected during EBSD mapping, and the resulting images available with the EBSD (and simultaneous EDS) data.

Figure 7: PRIAS™ Top Detector Image.

The first ROI is positioned at the top of the phosphor screen, and the resulting phase contrast is very similar to the contrast obtained with the ETD and ABS imaging modes on the SEM.

Figure 8: PRIAS™ Center Detector Image.

The second ROI is positioned at the center of the phosphor screen. This image shows more orientation contrast.

Figure 9: PRIAS™ Bottom Detector Image.

The third ROI is positioned at the bottom of the phosphor screen. This image shows more topographical contrast. All three of these images are complementary, both to each other but also to the different SEM images. They all give part of the total picture of the sample.

Figure 10: Defining Custom ROIs in PRIAS™.

With PRIAS™ it is also possible to define custom ROIs. In Figure 10, 3 different ROIs have been drawn within the phosphor screen area. The 3 corresponding images are then generated, and these can be reviewed, mixed, and then selected. In this case, I selected an ROI that reversed the phase contrast, like the contrast seen with the T1 detector in Figure 4.

Figure 11: PRIAS™ Center Image with EDS Bland Map (Red-Ni, Blue – Al, Green-Zr)

Figure 12: PRIAS™ Center Image with Orientation Map (IPF Map Surface Normal Direction).

Of course, the PRIAS™ information can also be directly correlated with the EDS and EBSD information collected during the mapping. Figure 11 shows an RGB EDS map while Figure 12 shows an IPF orientation map (surface normal direction with the corresponding orientation key) blended with the PRIAS™ center image. Having this available adds more information (via contrast) to the total microstructural characterization package.

I look forward to using our new SEM, to develop new ideas into tools and features for our users. I imagine a few new blogs posts should come from it as well!

Considerations for your New Year’s Resolutions from Dr. Pat

Dr. Patrick Camus, Director of Research and Innovation, EDAX

The beginning of the new calendar year is a time to reflect and evaluate important items in your life. At work, it might also be a time to evaluate the age and capabilities of the technical equipment in your lab. If you are a lucky employee, you may work in a newly refurbished lab where most of your equipment is less than 3 years old. If you are such a fortunate worker, the other colleagues in the field will be envious. They usually have equipment that is much more than 5 years old, some of it possibly dating from the last century!

Old Jalopy circa 1970 EDAX windowless Si(Li) detector circa early 70’s

In my case, at home my phone is 3 years old and my 3 vehicles are 18, 16, and 3 years old. We are definitely evaluating the household budget this year to upgrade the oldest automobile. We need to decide what are the highest priority items and which are not so important for our usage. It’s often important to sort through the different features offered and decide what’s most relevant … whether that’s at home or in the lab.

Octane Elite Silicon Drift Detector 2017 Dr. Pat’s Possible New Vehicle 2017

If your lab equipment is older than your vehicles, you need to determine whether the latest generation of equipment will improve either your throughput or the quality of your work. The latest generations of EDAX equipment can enormously speed up throughput and the improve quality of your analysis over that of previous generations – it’s just a matter of convincing your boss that this has value for the company. There is no time like the present for you to gather your arguments into a proposal to get the budget for the new generation of equipment that will benefit both you and the company.
Best of luck in the new year!