During August I have tried to finish my next article entitled: "Effect of Ti, Zr and Hf addition on microstructure and properties of rapidly solidified Al-Mn-Fe alloy”. I also prepared poster: “Quasicrystalline phase in Al-Mn-Fe-X melt spun ribbons – structure and stability” for the next conference: The 12th International Conference on Quasicrystals (ICQ12).

In July I have started corrosion experiments in HBSS salts solution in 37 st. C. First results of Mg-3Zn, Mg-3Ca, Mg-3Zn-2Ca and Mg-3Zn-3Ca wt. % are very promissing. Mass percentage loss varies among the samples as predicted.

In August I polished and polished ...it takes forever, occasionally, to produce a suitable sample for EBSD studies. Nevertheless the game is worth the effort since we manged to grow (directional solidification) a specimen comosed only of three or less grains!

This month I was focused on writing another one article. It is entitled: “Zastosowanie techniki FIB-SEM do badań wybranych materiałów drobnokrystalicznych” and is supposed to be printed in the proceedings of the “XLI Szkoła Inżynierii Materiałowej” conference which will take place in September in Krynica Zdrój. Additionally, I was processing the experimental data collected from ZrO2 samples using the Dream3D software.

Preliminary results of optical measurements of annealed samples with silver nano islands have showed the red shift of LSPR wavelength with incerse of silver layer thickness. Each sample displays diffusion part of either transmission and reflectance. Annealed silver samples on glass display much bigger transmission when compared to as sputtered.
Representative results with microstructure investigatetion results are expected in the beginning of Sepetmber.