Selective aluminum dissolution as a means to observe the microstructure of nanocrystalline intermetallic phases from Al-Fe-Cr-Ti-Ce rapidly solidified alloy

Rapidly solidified aluminum alloys are promising materials with very fine microstructure. The microscopy observation of these materials is complicated due to overlay of fcc-Al matrix and different intermetallic phases. A possible way to solve this problem is to dissolve the Al matrix. By this process powder formed by single intermetallic phase particles is obtained. In this paper a new aqueous based dissolving agent for Al-based alloy is presented. The influence of oxidation agent (FeCl3) concentration on quality of extraction process was studied. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.