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B. Putz, M. Bonta, C. Gierl-Mayer, H. Danninger, A. Limbeck:
"LA-ICP-MS imaging of the distribution of non-metallic additives in powder metallurgic steel samples";
Poster: Euroanalysis, 17th European Conference on Analytical Chemistry, Waschau, Polen; 25.08.2013 - 29.08.2013; in: "Book of Abstracts", (2013), ISBN: 978-83-7798-089-7; 1 S.

Amongst metallic additions also non-metallic hardening substances such as phosphorus or boron are often used to improve sintering behavior and finally the mechanical properties of powder metallurgy steels. However, with increasing concentration the mostly insoluble constituents tend to eliquate at grain boundaries and therefore lead to an embrittlement of the iron alloy. In order to improve the manufacturing process of the sinter material knowledge of the allocation of non-metallic substances within the grain structure is desirable. In routine methods for the determination of elemental distributions in powder metallurgic samples electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) is used. However, sensitivity of this technique is rather low. Therefore laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is proposed as alternative approach with reasonably lower detection limits.
In this study an LA-ICP-MS imaging method for the depiction of the distribution of diverse alloy constituents has been developed. Application of obtained procedure allows to identify concentration differences between individual phases and thus to confirm segregation of the added non-metallic hardening substances within the microstructure of the material.
Various iron alloy samples with differing amounts of additions were investigated. Derived results indicate enrichment of several components in different grain structures. Ongoing research has to be done in order to obtain quantitative information about the elemental distributions.

Laser Ablation, Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, steel samples, elemental distribution