Characterization Of Industrial Materials Research Articles

Industry and applied research meet at ILL

Over the last few years, several sectors of industry have used the facilities of the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) to make neutron scattering measurements related to their product research, control, and development. ILL seeks to increase its involvement in industry. A one-day workshop was held on June 29,2000 dedicated to the “Characterization of Industrial Materials Using Neutrons” to enable industry and applied research laboratories to learn more about what neutrons can be used for.

Application of focused ion beam milling to cross-sectional TEM specimen preparation of industrial materials including heterointerfaces

Specimen preparation is always a crucial question of transmission electron microscope (TEM) investigation. Recently new specimen preparation technique using focused ion beam (FIB) milling was developed. We applied this technique to the fabrication of cross-sectional TEM specimens of industrial materials including heterointerfaces. The following investigations were carried out: multilayered structures in thin-film transistors for the liquid crystal display, interfaces in a hot dip galvanized steel and microstructures of a diamond film on silicon nitride. The largest benefit of FIB lies in its application to heterointerface analysis at a particular position in submicron scale. This technique extends the use of TEM analysis into new areas of characterization of industrial materials.

Characterization of industrial materials by small angle X-ray scattering

Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) techniques have enabled remarkable progress to be made in both the experimental devices and algorithms of data processing. We have applied SAXS to the characterization of common industrial materials such as carbon fibres,γ-alumina, and poly-propylene films. For carbon fibres, the microporosity has been investigated by estimating the cross-sectional dimensions of the microvoids in the powdered specimens as well as in the aligned fibre bundles. The average particle size ofγ-alumina has been evaluated, and related to the heat-treatment conditions. Correlation-function analysis has revealed the changes in lamellar structure of polypropylene films induced by annealing. SAXS is shown to have the potential to be widely used as a practical method for characterizing materials of industrial importance.