Lead, tin and zinc metals and alloys
Description:
Lead, tin and zinc are unique materials because they each have a recrystallization temperature below room temperature.
Preparation Challenge:
The difficulty in preparing these metals for microstructural analysis is that they do not work harden and thus their microstructure can be altered simply by incorrect specimen prepration. 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.
