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Microstructural Analysis of Cadmium Whiskers on Long-Term-Used Hardware

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Abstract

A survey of cadmium plated field return hardware showed ubiquitous cadmium whisker growth. The most worn and debris-covered hardware showed the densest whisker growth. Whiskers were often found growing in agglomerates of nodules and whiskers. The hardware was rinsed with alcohol to transfer whiskers and debris from the hardware to a flat stub. Fifty whiskers were studied individually by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), including energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). Most of the whiskers were single crystal, though three were found to contain grain boundaries at kinks. The whiskers ranged from 5 to 600 μm in length and 80 pct showed a <\(\overline{1 }\) 2 \(\overline{1 }\) 0> type growth direction. This growth direction facilitates the development of low energy side faces of the whisker, (0001) and {1010}.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Joseph Michael for detailed crystallography discussion and review of this manuscript, and Dr. Mark Rodriguez for XRD analyses and other helpful discussion. This work was funded by Sandia National Laboratories Aging and Lifetime program. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525. This paper describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the United States Government.

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All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800, Albuquerque, NM, 87185, USA

    Rachel White, Zahra Ghanbari, Donald Susan, Sara Dickens, Timothy Ruggles & Daniel Perry

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  1. Rachel White
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  2. Zahra Ghanbari
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Manuscript submitted on April 23, 2021; accepted October 25, 2021.

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White, R., Ghanbari, Z., Susan, D. et al. Microstructural Analysis of Cadmium Whiskers on Long-Term-Used Hardware. Metall Mater Trans A 53, 200–210 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11661-021-06512-1

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