Nanoanalysis of Steels

Because high speed steels are increasingly used in many different technical applications, certain properties have to be optimized and improved continuously. These properties can be influenced by alloying specific elements and by sophisticated heat treatments which lead to a change of the microstructure. Since these variations occur very often on a nanometer scale, analytical electron microscopy is especially suited for the detailed study of the structural changes. In this work we concentrate on the characterization of secondary precipitates by using energy-filtering TEM (EFTEM), electron energy-loss spectrometry (EELS) and electron diffraction.