In May I took part in the "12th European Workshop on Modern Development and Applications in Microbeam Analysis" which was held in Angers, France. I presented a poster there, entitled “3D-EBDS investigation of Ni-Mo protective coatings”. An abstract of the poster contribution is given below. Additionally, I was taking part in 3D-EBSD measurements of a severely deformed aluminum alloy and a Ni-Mo deposit. Some results of these investigations were presented during the conference.

Abstract
P. Bobrowski, M. Faryna and A. Bigos

Hard, wear and corrosion resistant chromium coatings are widely used in aerospace, automotive and machinery industry. Despite of their excellent mechanical properties such coatings are to be eliminated from the manufacturing process due to severe toxicity of hexavalent chromium. A promising alternative to hard chromium coatings are Ni-based coatings containing refractory metals, e.g. Mo obtained from environmentally friendly ammonia-citrate electrolyte. This kind of Ni-Mo coating electrodeposited on steel substrates in a system with the rotating disk electrode under galvanostatic conditions at definite current density 4 A/dm2 was chosen for microstructure investigations. Size, shape as well as orientation of Ni-Mo crystals grown on low carbon stainless steel substrate were established in scanning electron microscope (SEM) by use of three-dimensional electron backscatter diffraction (3D EBSD) technique. It combines a regular 2D orientation imaging microscopy (OIM) with focused ion beam (FIB) sputtering. The FIB consecutively removes successive layers of the material being investigated while the EBSD/SEM acquires electron diffraction data. Such measurements were performed on Quanta 3D FEG SEM with geometrical setup employing rotating pre-tilted sample holder. Experimental parameters and measuring conditions for diffraction acquisition from coating with directionally grown Ni and Mo crystals were evaluated and optimized.