Copper and Copper Alloys
Description:
Copper 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. from the low hardness as well as the recrystallization issue.
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.
