Novel technique to suppress hydrocarbon contamination for high accuracy determination of carbon content in steel by FE-EPMA

In multiphase steels, control of the carbon contents in the respective phases is the most important factor in alloy design for achieving high strength and high ductility. However, it is unusually difficult to determine the carbon contents in multiphase structures with high accuracy by electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) due to the unavoidable effect of hydrocarbon contamination during measurements. We have investigated new methods for suppressing hydrocarbon contamination during field emission (FE) EPMA measurements as well as a conventional liquid nitrogen trap. Plasma cleaner inside the specimen chamber results in a improvement of carbon-content determination by point analysis, increasing precision tenfold from the previous 0.1 mass%C to 0.01 mass%C. Stage heating at about 100 °C dramatically suppresses contamination growth during continuous point measurement and mapping. By the combination of above two techniques, we successfully visualized the two-dimensional carbon distribution in a dual-phase steel. It was also noted that the carbon concentrations at the ferrite/martensite interfaces were not the same across all interfaces, and local variation was observed. The developed technique is expected to be a powerful tool for understanding the mechanisms of mechanical properties and microstructural evolution, thereby contributing to the design of new steel products with superior properties.

Importance of Carbon Contamination in High-Resolution (FEG) EPMA of Silicate Minerals

The effect of carbon contamination on the analysis of carbon-coated silicate minerals at 5 kV for X-ray energies 0.7-4 keV is examined. For individual spot analyses, carbon is found to deposit adjacent to the beam spot forming ring-shaped deposits with no impact on the analysis. Carbon contamination becomes important for closely spaced analyses such as multipoint transects, where each subsequent analysis overlaps the carbon ring of the previous analysis. X-ray intensity loss due to contamination is most severe for low-overvoltage elements such as Ca K consistent with carbon deposition effectively reducing beam energy. Rates of contamination are calculated and the use of a liquid nitrogen cold trap is shown to greatly reduce the amount of carbon deposited. A complimentary empirical correction is developed to correct for X-ray intensity loss from measured carbon, assuming the carbon is a film, and is compared with corrections derived from thin film calculations. PENELOPE electron probe microanalysis (PENEPMA) calculations confirm that asymmetry of the carbon deposition can be ignored for X-ray energies where intensity loss is predominantly through energy loss of beam electrons. Using a cold trap and/or an empirical correction high spatial resolution analysis (ca. 400 nm between points) is achievable with analytical errors of ca. 1-3%.

Characterization of dual-phase steel microstructure by combined submicrometer EBSD and EPMA carbon measurements

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) measurements are combined to characterize an industrial produced dual-phase steel containing some bainite fraction. High-resolution carbon mappings acquired on a field emission electron microprobe are utilized to validate and improve the identification of the constituents (ferrite, martensite, and bainite) performed by EBSD using the image quality and kernel average misorientation. The combination eliminates the ambiguity between the identification of bainite and transformation-induced dislocation zones, encountered if only the kernel average misorientation is considered. The detection of carbon in high misorientation regions confirms the presence of bainite. These results are corroborated by secondary electron images after nital etching. Limitations of this combined method due to differences between the spatial resolution of EBSD and EPMA are assessed. Moreover, a quantification procedure adapted to carbon analysis is presented and used to measure the carbon concentration in martensite and bainite on a submicrometer scale. From measurements on reference materials, this method gives an accuracy of 0.02 wt% C and a precision better than 0.05 wt% C despite unavoidable effects of hydrocarbon contamination.