Tracking the melting & solidification process of titanium

The change in a metal’s state can indicate its stability as a material and therefore its suitability for specific applications. While many imaging techniques can track these changes in part, very few can capture the entire dynamic process that takes place during a metal’s phase change.

To achieve a complete understanding of this process using imaging techniques would normally require the capture of multiple images (and re-positioning) across different contrast channels.  However, a team of scientists from MicroWorks GmbH and University College London, were able to exploit a dynamic implementation of beam tracking (BT) to provide a single-mask phase capture.  They used the pink beam spectrum on Diamond’s beamline I13-2 (with access to a wide range of wavelengths) to investigate the melting and solidification process of commercially pure titanium.

This multi-channel approach enabled the team to combine multiple phases (transmission, refraction, and dark-field) using the acquisition of one single image, to reveal previously hidden features.  By making changes in the mask aperture size, time-resolved images at full spatial resolution could easily be determined.

Find out what they discovered.