Bridging Length Scales in Hard Materials with Ultra-Small Angle X-ray Scattering – A Critical Review

Published

August 1, 2024

Author(s)

Fan Zhang, Jan Ilavsky

Abstract

Due to their exceptional properties, hard materials such as advanced ceramics, metals, and composites have enormous economic and societal values, with applications across numerous industries. Understanding their microstructural characteristics is crucial for enhancing their performance, materials development, and unleashing their potential for future innovative applications. However, their microstructures are unambitiously hierarchical and typically span several length scales, from sub-angstrom to micrometers, posing demanding challenges for their characterization, especially for in-situ characterization critical to understanding the kinetic processes controlling microstructure formations. This review provides a comprehensive description of the rapidly developing technique of ultra-small angle X-ray scattering (USAXS), a nondestructive method for probing the nano-to-micrometer scale features of hard materials. USAXS and its complementary techniques, when developed for and applied to hard materials, offer valuable insights into their porosity, grain size, phase composition, and inhomogeneities. We discuss the fundamental principles, instrumentation, advantages, challenges, and global status of USAXS for hard materials. Using selected examples, we demonstrate the technique's potential for unveiling the microstructural characteristics of hard materials and its relevance to advanced materials development and manufacturing process optimization. We also provide our perspective on the opportunities and challenges for the continued development of USAXS, including multimodal characterization, coherent scattering, time-resolved studies, machine learning and autonomous experiments. Our goal is to stimulate further implementation and exploration of USAXS techniques and inspire their broader adoption across various domains of hard materials science, thereby driving the field toward discoveries and further developments.

Citation

IUCrJ

Volume

11

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1107/S2052252524006298

Local Download

Keywords

Ultra-Small Angle X-ray Scattering, Alloys, Ceramics, Hard Materials, Microstructure, Synchrotron

Citation

Zhang, F. and Ilavsky, J. (2024), Bridging Length Scales in Hard Materials with Ultra-Small Angle X-ray Scattering – A Critical Review, IUCrJ, [online], https://doi.org/10.1107/S2052252524006298, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=957602 (Accessed December 11, 2024)