Characterisation of Niobium Carbide and Carbonitride Evolution within Ferrite: Contribution of Transmission Electron Microscopy and Advanced Associated Techniques

Niobium is a strong carbide forming element which is often used in microalloyed steels to control the grain size during thermomechanical treatments and to provide strengthening through precipitation processes. A detailed microscopic investigation is one of the keys for understanding the first stages of the precipitation sequence, thus Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) is required. The main difficulty of TEM studies is due to the nanometre …