Surface Hardening of Steels and Alloys Using a Corona Discharge

Metal Science and Heat Treatment -     

Lattice Distortion Analysis Directly from High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy Images—the LADIA Program Package

Direct strain mapping from high resolution transmission electron microscopy images is possible for coherent structures.At proper imaging conditions the intensity peaks in the image have a constant spatial relationship with the projected atom columns.This allows the determination of the geometry of the projected unit cell without comparison with image simulations.The fast procedure is particularly suited for the analysis of large areas.The software package LADIA is written in the PV-WAVE code and provides all necessary tools for image processing and analysis.Image iintensity peaks are determined by a cross-correlation technique,which avoids problems from noise in the low spatial frequency renage.The lower limit of strain that can be detected at a sampling rate of 44 pixels/nm is ≈2%.     

Impact of temperature cycle profile on fatigue life of solder joints

In this paper the influence of the temperature cycle time history profile on the fatigue life of ball grid array (BGA) solder joints is studied. Temperature time history in a Pentium processor laptop computer was measured for a three-month period by means of thermocouples placed inside the computer. In addition, Pentium BGA packages were subjected to industry standard temperature cycles and also to in-situ measured temperature cycle profiles. Inelastic strain accumulation in each solder joint during thermal cycling was measured by high sensitivity Moire interferometry technique. Results indicate that fatigue life of the solder joint is not independent of the temperature cycle profile used. Industry standard temperature cycle profile leads to conservative fatigue life observations by underestimating the actual number of cycles to failure.     

Subnanometer-scale chemistry and structure of α-iron/molybdenum nitride heterophase interfaces

The local chemistry and structure of α-iron/molybdenum nitride heterophase interfaces is studied on a subnanometer scale by atom-probe field-ion microscopy (APFIM), three-dimensional atom-probe microscopy (3DAPM) and both conventional transmission electron microscopy (CTEM) and highresolution electron microscopy (HREM). Molybdenum nitride precipitates are generated by annealing Fe-2 at. pct Mo-X, where X=0.4 at. pct Sb or 0.5 at. pct Sn, at 550 °C or 600 °C, in an ammonia/hydrogen mixture. Internal nitridation at 550 °C produces thin, coherent platelet-shaped molybdenum nitride precipitates. Nitridation at 600 °C generates a much coarser structure with semicoherent thick plate-shaped and spheroidal precipitates in addition to the thin-platelet structure. The APFIM and 3DAPM analyses of the heterophase interfaces show substantial segregation of the solute species Sn and Sb only at the coarse precipitates, with Gibbsian interfacial excesses of up to 7±3 nm⁻², whereas the broad faces of the thin platelets have no detectable segregation. The TEM and HREM analyses show that the coarse precipitates are semicoherent, whereas the thin platelets are either coherent or have much fewer misfit dislocations than geometrically necessary. This demonstrates that Sn and Sb segregation is related to the presence of misfit dislocations at the interfaces of the coarse precipitates. This article is based on a presentation made at the symposium entitled “The Mechanisms of the Massive Transformation,” a part of the Fall 2000 TMS Meeting held October 16–19, 2000, in St. Louis, Missouri, under the auspices of the ASM Phase Transformations Committee.     

Microsomal and photochemical oxidation of aflatoxin B1

The UV irradiation (lambda = 362 nm) of aflatoxin B1 (AfB1) dissolved in water resulted in the formation of an oxidized product. The process was not inhibited by ionol, a routine inhibitor of the radical processes. The oxidized product was not found in the system where AfB1 was metabolized by the 3-methylcholanthrene-activated rat liver microsomes. It is suggested that the product is identical with 2,3-dihydrodiol of AfB1.     

Optimization in periodic Markovian decision processes

We consider a Markovian decision process with a nonhomogeneous transition function satisfying a periodicity condition. An optimization method is proposed which computes the optimal periodic strategy for an unbounded time interval.Translated from Kibernetika, No. 2, pp. 91–94, 99, March–April, 1991.