June was rather event heavy. At the very beginning of the month I had some of my titanium KoBo-ed at AGH. It was the first time I saw working KoBo press and experience was quite terrifying. Fortunately no one got hurt, apart from two dies (8 and 10 mm diameter) that where used in extrusion attempts. Unfortunately for them material they where made of wasn't heat-strong enough (extrusion in 400 C degrees; with billet heated to 450 C degrees;) and both of them where destroyed, but some titanium (about 3 cm in length) was extruded with 10 mm die. Next extrusion attempt of titanium will take place when appropriate heat-strong die is ready.
Following that i spent first half of the month on preparations of poster for EMAS workshop, which means more sample preparations (KoBo-ed zinc this time), and more data analysis. Investigated phenomena was related to highly deformed lattice in near vicinity of grain boundaries. Because of that (and the fact that observed grains were much bigger than anticipated) EBSD maps had to be high resolution (step size 100 nm) and big area ath the asme time (order of 200 micrometers to capture considerable amount of grains). This caused resulting map data files to be huge and difficult to manipulate and analyze. Finally however difficulties were overcomed and poster was produced.
Padua (where EMAS workshop took place) was extremely hot, but also beautiful so I can't complain much. Workshop itself was interesting and informative, especially thanks to big session devoted to different aspects of EBSD technique, which I am particularly interested in.
Later in June I participated in Advanced Materials and Nanoanalysis Workshop held in our Institute.

I participated in Workshops 'Advanced Materials and Nanoanalysis' held in 25-26.06.2012 in Cracow. The conference was organized by the Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science of Polish Academy of Sciences and the Dresden Fraunhofer Cluster Nanoanalysis under the auspices of the European Federation of Materials Science and Engineering in cooperation with the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy.
The purpose of the meeting was to present the latest developments in the field of advanced materials and nano-analysis and outline the directions of current research.

In June I took part in the 19th International Symposium on Metastable, Amorphous and Nanostructured Materials - ISMANAM 2012 (Moscow, 17-23 June). I presented a poster there entitled “Effect of reinforcement particle size on microstructure and mechanical behavior of AlZnMgCu/AlN nano-composites produced using mechanical alloying”. I am also a co-author of an article under the same title, which was submitted to Journal of Alloys and Compounds.
I also co-organized and participated in the “Advanced Materials and Nanoanalysis” workshop, which was held in our Institute on June 25-26th.

Main activities and studies carried out during June:

- Preparing a poster for the conference
- Participation in the conference ISMANAM 2012
- Preparing of an article from the results obtained so far
- Participation in the workshop „Advanced Materials and Nanoanalysis”
- Preparing some new melt spun ribbons
- Participation in seminars and lectures

This month I took part in conference "EMAS 2012 Regional Workshop" that was held in Padowa. An abstract of the poster presentation is given below:

The “Crofer 22 APU” is a trade name of the steel developed for use in high temperature solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). It is used as an interconnector material between cells and serves as electrical current collector. Such a material has to fulfill several requirements, e.g.: low electrical resistance, stability in atmosphere of reacting gases at elevated temperature, matching of thermal expansion coefficient value to other constituents and, last but not least, low manufacturing cost. The Crofer steel meets most of these requirements, however there is still a need to improve its stability in oxidizing atmosphere.
When exposed to working conditions, a layer of chromium oxide (Cr2O3) is formed on the steel surface. Chromia has a very good electrical conductivity, comparing to Al2O3 and SiO2, but can create volatile species that lower the efficiency of some SOFC components. Manganese is added to the steel to form chromium-manganese spinel on the oxides surface preventing chromium evaporation. Oxide layers grown on the Crofer surface at 800˚C in air atmosphere during different times of exposure were chosen
for investigations. Size and shape, as well as orientation of Cr2O3 and Mn1.5Cr1.5O4 crystallites were analyzed by means of 2D and 3D EBSD. The chemical composition of oxides was investigated using EDS and WDS to analyze the changes in concentration of steel additives like La, Cu Al and Si.