STM Study on the Surface Relief and Mechanism of Bainite Transformation

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM ) has been first employed to study the surface relief accompanying bainite transformation in a Fe-2.17C-12.18Cr-0.31Si-0.26Mn (wt pct) steel. With the exclusive vertical resolution of STM, we observed that the surface relief associated with bainite is a group of surface reliefs related to subplates, subunits and sub-subunits. As a whole, the relief group is in a tent shape, not of invariant plane strain (IPS) type, which is obviously different from that of martensite, and implying that bainite is not formed by shear mechanism. The fine structure of bainite in Fe-1.0C-4Cr-2.0Si (wt pct) alloy has also been studied with STM and TEM. It is found that the bainite plate is composed of subplates, subunits and sub-subunits. On the basis of the fine structure inside a bainitic ferrite plate observed under STM, a sympathetic-ledgewise mechanism of bainite formation is proposed