My advanture with PhD studies has begun. In October, that is, first month of my PhD studies I have done literature research. I have read a lot of papers related to grain boundaries concerning diffrent methods of boundary parametrizations, techniques of representing misorientations, tools for recognizing various characteristic types of GBs. I have written some first lines of source code of my software tool, which, in the future, will be able to perform some analysis of a single boundary and to carry out some statistical analysis of large data sets of grain boundaries. I started with functions for conversion between various rotation representations.

Main studies carried out during October:

- participation in workshop on 6th and 7th of October organized by Warsaw University of Technology & Hitachi High-Technologies on Advanced Electron Microscopy Methods Applied to Investigations of Nanomaterials.

- microstructure observation of thin foils prepared from melt spun ribbons containing Mo, Cr addition using TEM

- DSC measurements for all samples of melt spun ribbons with addition of fourth element (V, Ti, Zr, Cr, Mo), results were compared with the DSC curve for melt-spun ribbons with initial ternary composition

- XRD measurements for all the samples of melt spun ribbon with addition of fourth element were performed to determine their phase structure. As a result no significant change in phase composition was observed comparing to melt spun ribbons of initial alloy.

- stay for one week in The Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science of Hungarian Academy of Sciences, performing in-situ experiment and EELS measurements together with Prof. János L. Lábár and dr György Z. Radnoczi.

- participation in seminar, which was given by prof. Ehrenfried Zschech from Fraunhofer Institute for Non-Destructive Testing IZFP with the title: “Energy-efficient microelectronics - The contribution of materials science and engineering”

In October (6-7th) I took part in a workshop on Advanced Electron Microscopy Methods Applied to Investigations of Nanomaterials organized by Warsaw University of Technology & Hitachi High-Technologies. I participated in a series of lectures devoted to scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and in a practical session in front of the HITACHI HD-2700 scanning transmission electron microscope equipped in electron energy loss spectrometer (EELS)

My research in October:

During the first month of my PhD studies at the Institute of Metallurgy and Material Polish Academy of Sciences I have made an literature review concerning biodegradable magnesium alloys for biomedical applications. I focused my attention especially on problems connected with corrosion behavior in body fluids and selection of possible biocompatible alloying elements.

On 6th and 7th of October I participated in “Warsaw University of Technology & Hitachi High – Technologies Workshop II on Advanced Electron Microscopy Methods Applied to Investigation of Nanomaterials” in Warsaw.

In october I was continuing the study of stability of homogeneous citrate solutions with various concentrations of sodium citrate, sodum molybdate , zinc sulphate and tin sulpate and the study of electrochemical properties of citrate complexes presented in examinated solutions by cyclic voltammetry with rotating disc electrode.
It is really interesting topic, but many have to be done to understand all processes occurring in the investigated systems and draw unequivocal conclusions.