3D observation of grain boundary penetration in Al alloys

Synchrotron radiation X-ray microtomography is used to investigate the penetration of liquid gallium into the grain boundaries of aluminium.Penetration and wetting processes play a key role in the understanding of liquid metal embrittlement. The large difference in absorption coefficients between Cia and Al allows micrometer and sub-micrometer thick liquid Ga films to be observed as they are wetting grain boundaries of Al. The tomographic reconstruction are compared to electron backscattering diffraction mappings recorded on the sample surface. Morphologic segmentation of the tomographic dataset opens the way to analyse and visualize the three-dimensional microstructure of the material.