Abstract
Epsilon carbide precipitation in steel martensite has been investigated by means of transmission electron microscopy. The first stage of tempering initiates with the nucleation of very fine ε-carbide particles on the closely spaced parallel line defects, the morphology being so-called “cross-hatched” ε-carbide needles. The ε-carbide particles which produce the well-defined dif-fraction patterns are related to the martensite matrix with a Pitsch and Schrader orientation relationship.[32] These particles subsequently grow into rods elongated in the direction parallel to the\(\langle 100\rangle _\alpha \parallel \langle 11\bar 20\rangle _\varepsilon \) within the matrix. The final reaction in the first stage is the rearrangement of ε-carbide rods into a disklike morphology. The e-carbide rods elongated in the 〈100〉ε di-rections coalesce on
planes in a raftlike manner, as in the case of those formed in the quench-aged low-carbon ferrite, the tetragonality of martensite being completely lost. Although the deviation from hexagonal symmetry about the [0001]ε axis exists, no evidence of orthorhombic η-carbide formation was obtained.
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Ohmori, Y., Tamura, I. Epsilon carbide precipitation during tempering of plain carbon martensite. Metall Trans A 23, 2737–2751 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02651753
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02651753