5. Applications

5.1 Materials engineering

• Observation of microstructures

  Scanning electron microscopy routinely enables high magnification observation of the microstructures of materials prepared by polishing and appropriate etching. In most cases, metallographic etching hollows out grain boundaries and phase interfaces and/or dissolves each phase differently, thus creating a significant micro-relief that can be easily observed with secondary electron imaging. In this case, it complements optical microscopy to distinguish microstructural constituents in great detail (figure 35 ).