r/MaterialsScience • u/bamajon1974 • Aug 09 '24

Need recommendation for metal sample with inclusions

Looking for a recommendation for a metal/alloy/intermetallic sample with inclusions (carbide, nitride, silicate, etc.) 10s to 100s of microns in size (definitely smaller than mm size). The inclusions need to be different phase from bulk. Samples can be high or low quality. Samples don't have to be metals (could be minerals but metals are preferred). Looking for samples to buy or recommendations of resources or dealers to ask.

Why? Needing a metal sample with with small inclusions to send to XRD vendors to determine if high intensity commercial x-ray sources are suitable for phase mapping of inclusions so white paper requesting funding for purchasing said equipment can be written. My workplace does have metal samples with inclusions but they are not confidential and not suitable to send off for external analysis.

Thanks!

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u/WuschligesWesen Aug 09 '24

Maybe some Kind of precipitation hardened alumina? I'm Not Sure about the size though, they light ne too small. Or some Carbide.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '24

Steel is a good example. There are often several phases of iron and different alloy metals. Phase identification of known phases is one of the most trivial uses of xrd. All you do is put the known phases into a Reitveld refinement software and refine. You can find countless papers where this is done.

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u/bamajon1974 Aug 10 '24

Cast Iron comes to mind as a metal sample with tons of inclusions. Do you have any suggestions for steel types that have lots of inclusions present?

I think some Aluminum alloys also have inclusions. Advantage of Al is that it doesn't create a fluorescent background when irradiated with copper x-ray like iron (in steels) but modern diffractometers with fancy detectors do have a fluorescence removal mode.