Rapid production of pillar structures on the surface of single crystal CMSX-4 superalloy by femtosecond laser machining

On the origin of mosaicity in directionally solidified Ni-base superalloys

“…Unfortunately, the low penetration depth and limited field of view of X-ray and electron based techniques, typically restricts practical deployment to sample surface analysis and small areas [3,10,11,13,31,32]. More importantly, methods based on such underlying technology are not currently equipped with the necessary arsenal to quantify the liquidus isotherm shape, macrosegregation, or non-uniform dendrite tip growth kinetics during directional solidification.…”

The LaserFIB: new application opportunities combining a high-performance FIB-SEM with femtosecond laser processing in an integrated second chamber

“…With the introduction of a femtosecond laser on a FIB-SEM as described in (Barnett et al 2020), this HAZ was significantly reduced thanks to the athermal nature of heat transport enabled by the femtosecond laser pulse length. Combined with material removal rates orders of magnitude faster than traditional methods such as gallium FIB or plasma FIB (PFIB) milling (Table 1), this new LaserFIB enables numerous new capabilities, including access to deeply buried structures as well as production of extremely large trenches, cross sections, pillars, and TEM H-bars, all while preserving microstructure and avoiding or reducing FIB polishing. A number of high impact applications are now possible due to this technology in the fields of crystallography, electronics, mechanical engineering, battery research and materials sample preparation.…”

2D single crystal Bragg-dip mapping by time-of-flight energy-resolved neutron imaging on IMAT@ISIS

“…Furthermore, the variation in (001) misorientation perpendicular to the withdrawal direction should be intrinsically related to the shape of the solid/liquid isotherm 11 . Unfortunately, standard microstructural investigation tools, such as optical and electron microscopy, are limited to 2D sample surface analysis 13 , 14 . There are some techniques for 3D reconstruction, however, they are time and labour intensive and provide only local reconstructions of small volumes 15 , 16 .…”