This month I finished writing the literature review chapter and materials and experimental procedure chapter of my thesis.

I also submitted two abstracts for following scientific events:
- "XV International Conference on Electron Microscopy"
- "Electron Crystallography School – Introduction to electron diffraction tomography"

This January was the time to summary results of cytotoxicity experiments. Thus multilayer polyelectrolyte films consist of chitosan/chondroitin sulfate polymers exhibit a fast biodegradability in the environment of human tissues. Lifetime extension of this material type could be implemented by its structure stabilization through the introduction of nanoparticles. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) methods were used to determine the microstructure and localization of the silicon carbide nanoparticles introduced to the extracellular like structure of the polymer coatings. Modified coatings biocompatibility was analyzed in cytotoxicity assay and microscopic observations of endothelial cells growth on the material surface.

Last month I submitted an abstract entitled
"Toward effective analysis of large grain boundary data sets"
for the ICOTOM conference. I did some work
concerning comparison of experimentally obtained
grain boundary distributions with
grain boundary energy models and atomistic simulation data available in literature.

In january heating stage have been installed, and series of experiments have been performed, among them in-situ recrystallization of KoBo deformed titanium. Temperatures of heating experiment have been chosen basing on previously performed DSC analysis of KoBo deformed titanium. This analysis yielded two distinct peaks corresponding to exothermic phenomena related to recrystallization process. EBSD map have been collected from sample at room temperature, and then temperature have been increased to beginning of first peak. This was accompanied by sudden drop of diffraction pattern quality. Even though time was given for system to stabilize after temperature increase, pattern quality was low quality until the temperature was increased to temperatures over second crystallization peak from DSC analysis. Since limited time was available experiment could not be repeated. In future experiments either longer time for system stabilization should be allowed, or much smaller heating speed should be chosen.
Microstructure obtained after last temperature increase was completely recrystallized with coarse equiaxed grains, however texture have not evolved during this heating experiment.

This month I sent two applications for Conferences:
1) 17-th International Conference on Textures of Materials (24-29.08.2014 Dresen, Germany);
2) XV International Conference on Electron Microscopy (15-18.09.2014 Cracow, Poland).

I prepared abstracts for these conferences:
1) „Microstructure and texture changes during annealing of particle containing AA3004 aluminum alloy deformed by ECAP”
authors: J.Poplewska, H.Paul, A.Tarasek
2) “Effect of second phase particles on microstructure changes during annealing of Al-alloys pre-deformed by ECAP”
authors: J.Poplewska, H.Paul, K.Berent