Aluminum and Aluminum Alloys
Description:
Aluminum and its alloys are relatively soft materials which have a wide range of alloy applications.
Preparation Challenge:
The difficulty in preparing these materials arises from the fact that these materials have oxide inclusions in the microstructure. Proper specimen preparation retains these microstructures and thus eliminates scratching and smearing from these particles. If the specimen is not prepared properly the microstructure will not be accurately represented. For example, pure tin has a relatively large grain size, however if not prepared properly the microstructure of the pure tin will actually appear to be quite small because of recrystallization.
