Complementary use of TEM and APT for the investigation of steels nanostructured by severe plastic deformation

TL;DR

This paper discusses how combining TEM and APT techniques provides a comprehensive understanding of nanostructures in severely deformed steels, focusing on atomic-scale features like segregation and composition gradients.

Contribution

It demonstrates the complementary use of TEM and APT to analyze nanostructures in steels, highlighting their advantages and limitations based on experimental data.

Findings

TEM and APT together offer detailed atomic-scale insights.

Carbon distribution varies at defect sites in nanostructured steels.

Complementary techniques improve understanding of nanostructure properties.

Abstract

The properties of bulk nanostructured materials are often controlled by atomic scale features like segregation along defects or composition gradients. Here we discuss about the complimentary use of TEM and APT to obtain a full description of nanostructures. The advantages and limitations of both techniques are highlighted on the basis of experimental data collected in severely deformed steels with a special emphasis on carbon spatial distribution.