Correlated subgrain and particle analysis of a recovered Al-Mn alloy by directly combining EBSD and backscatter electron imaging

Correlated analysis of (sub)grains and particles in alloys is important to understand transformation processes and control material properties. A multimodal data fusion workflow directly combining subgrain data from electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and particle data from backscatter electron (BSE) images in the scanning electron microscope is presented. The BSE images provide detection of particles smaller than the applied step size of EBSD down to 0.03 mu m in diameter. The workflow is demonstrated on a cold-rolled and recovered Al-Mn alloy, where constituent particles formed during casting and dispersoids formed during subsequent heating affect recovery and recrystallization upon annealing. The multimodal dataset enables statistical analysis including subgrains surrounding constituent particles and dispersoids' location with respect to subgrain boundaries. Among the subgrains of recrystallization texture, Cube{001}(100) subgrains experience an increased Smith-Zener drag from dispersoids on their boundaries compared to CubeND{001}(310) and P{011}(566) subgrains, with the latter experiencing the lowest drag. Subgrains at constituent particles are observed to have a growth advantage due to a lower dislocation density and higher boundary misorientation angle. The dispersoid size per subgrain boundary length increases as a function of misorientation angle. The workflow should be applicable to other alloy systems where there is a need for analysis correlating grains and grain boundaries with secondary phases smaller than the applied EBSD step size but resolvable by BSE imaging.

Automated summary

Correlated analysis of (sub)grains and particles in alloys is important for understanding transformation processes and controlling material properties. This paper presents a multimodal data fusion workflow that combines subgrain data from electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) with particle data from backscatter electron (BSE) images in the scanning electron microscope. The workflow was demonstrated on a cold-rolled and recovered Al-Mn alloy and enables statistical analysis of subgrains surrounding constituent particles and dispersoids' location with respect to subgrain boundaries. The results show that the different types of subgrains experience varying degrees of drag from dispersoids, and subgrains at constituent particles have a growth advantage due to lower dislocation density and higher boundary misorientation angle.