In May due to upcoming EMAS workshops, effort was done to prepare more zinc samples in order to confirm previous observations and collect proper amount of data for statistics. Unfortunately as previous EBSD observations revealed, preparation of zinc samples in a way that no distortion to the crystalline lattice and no twins are introduced is considerable problem and cannot be carried out in short time span. This is true especially for preparation of samples from non deformed zinc (initial state) which is generally softer and quite easily deformed during cutting and grinding. Introduced layer of deformation with deformation twins is then extremely hard to remove during mechanical polishing as affected layer can have thickness up to hundreds of micrometers (at least one grain layer). Partial solution to this problem is removal of deformed and twinned material during chemical etching. This method is faster and does not introduce additional deformation, however it also does not produce flat, even surface. This is due to differences of etching speed of crystals in different orientations, as well as much faster etching of grain boundaries. Because of this etching has to be followed with careful grinding on 2500 SiC grinding paper in order to remove topography and produce surface suitable for EBSD analysis.

May was a month when I totally rearranged the vision of my program and made some steps towards analysis of experimental data.
Thousands of lines of code were developed making my program a tool for users not only for the author.

In may I continued spectrophotometric and voltamperometric studies of citrate bath with various concentrqtions of zinc sulpate ant sodium molybdate. I also lead the electrodeposition procesess in potentiostatic and coulostatic conditions on the steel and copper surfaces, from stable homogeneous and Zn(II)-Mo(VI) citrate baths, in the slightly acid range (pH about 5), with different concentration of metals and citrate ions.

From 14th to 25th May I participate in course “Electrocemical Impedance Spectroscopy and its applications” at Faculty of Chemistry of University of Warsaw.
Outline
1. AC response of Electrical Circuits, Laplace and Fourier transform
2. Impedance of Electrical Circuits and impedance graphs
3. Impedance measurements
4. Impedance of faradaic reactions in the presence of diffusion
5. Impedance of a faradaic reaction involving adsorption of reacting species
6. Dispersion of impedances on solid electrodes
7. Impedance of porous electrodes
8. Conditions for "good" impedances, stability, Kramers-Kronig Transforms
9. Modeling of experimental data
10. Selected applications
11. Exercises using computers

Course was given by prof. A. Lasia from Sherbrooke University (Canada).

This month I was wocused on investigations of the Crofer 22APU samples recieved from Foundry Research Institute. I was using EDS and WDS to measure chemical composition of surface oxide layers formed upon annealing in oxidative envitoment.

This month, I was preoccupied with preparations for a business trip - organizing travel, accommodation, etc. in order to participate in the Conference 'Oxford Instruments EBSD Symposium and Workshop 2012' held between 22-24 May 2012 in Wiesbaden-Schlangenbad.I was also working on preparation results of my research in the form of PowerPoint presentations (including the processing of photographs from SEM, presents results in tables and graphs, choice of resolution, etc.).

My participation in the Symposium was related to the presentation of research results of AA1050 aluminium alloy after 1 hour annealing in selected temperatures previously deformed by ECAP.
My results were delivered in a 15 minutes presentation titled: ‘Early stages of recrystallization in ultra fine-grained AA1050 aluminium alloy’. Please find attached 'related link'.