Rapid assessment of anisotropic surface processes: experiments on the corrosion of Inconel 600

We present a general experimental method for rapid characterization of surface processes on crystals of many orientations. By correlating maps of crystallographic orientation (obtained by electron backscatter diffraction methods) with those of surface topography (obtained by atomic force microscopy), we illustrate how a surface property can be elucidated on many off-principle crystal surfaces from a single polycrystalline specimen. For the corrosion of Inconel 600 in a dilute aqueous solution of HCl, we find that corrosion rates scale with the deviation angle of the surface normal from an ideal (1 1 1) direction. The use of atomic force microscopy can also provide mechanistic details about the surface process in question. For Inconel 600, we correlate the surface oxide morphology directly to the orientation of the underlying crystal. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.