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Guides, 3D labs and worked examples across six chapters of materials science, from the first concept to what the textbook leaves out.
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75 pagesMicroscopy & characterizationUnderstand structure from electrons to atoms.TEM · EBSD · APT19 pagesStructure & transformationsFrom atomic arrangements to phase changes.Structure & Transformations40 pagesMechanics & surfacesHow materials deform, wear and interact.Contact Mechanics · Mechanical Behavior6 pagesExperimental workflowsFrom sample prep to in-situ experiments.In-situ Testing
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Start with these
GuideThe Three Contrasts of TEMInteractive guide to the three contrast mechanisms of TEM: mass-thickness contrast, diffraction contrast with a live bright-field/dark-field polycrystal tilt simulator, and phase contrast with a CTF defocus lattice-fringe demo.LabEBSD Terms ExplainedEvery EBSD term in one place, each with a small interactive: indexing, IQ, CI and MAD, phases, Euler angles and quaternions, IPF and Euler maps, misorientation, KAM, GROD, GOS, GAM, GND, texture and the Schmid factor.GuideInstrument, Prep & ApplicationsVoltage-pulsed versus laser-pulsed atom probe, FIB lift-out and annular milling of a site-specific needle, grain-boundary segregation, and correlative APT + TEM. Interactive explainers.
Stories
Real examples to build intuition
StoryTwo Bars, One MeltA one-minute scrolling story: two bars from one melt, one heat treatment apart, and why one cracked. Grain boundaries,…StoryWhat the Electron SawA scrolling illustrated story about transmission electron microscopy: two electrons leave the same tip, ride the same…StoryThe Map of EveryoneA scrolling illustrated story about EBSD: one pixel's Kikuchi interview, four million interviews becoming an…StoryThe Needle That RememberedA scrolling illustrated story about APT, and the finale of the case: a needle carved from bar B's grain boundary,…StoryThe Mountain Range You Cannot SeeA scrolling illustrated story about tribology: zoom into a contact until the real touching area appears, follow one…
Advanced
The textbook stops here
GuideWhen Forbidden Reflections AppearInteractive guide to forbidden reflections and superlattices in TEM: why spots are systematically absent, the mechanisms that make them appear (double diffraction, relrods, stacking faults), and a field guide to superlattices in metals and alloys: chemical ordering, the omega phase, long-period structures and their look-alikes.GuideGrain Orientations & Reciprocal SpaceInteractive TEM guide to grain orientations in reciprocal space: zone-axis tilts with Laue circle and Kikuchi lines, misorientation (LAGB, HAGB, twins), polycrystalline rings and texture arcs, and orientation terminology.GuideWeak-Beam Dark FieldInteractive guide to weak-beam dark field: why strong-beam dislocation images are fat (Pendellösung and extinction distance), the g–3g tilt walkthrough on the Ewald sphere, a Howie–Whelan dislocation-image simulator, the g·b invisibility criterion, and measuring stacking-fault energy from partial separation in Cu.GuideHRTEM & FFTsInteractive guide to HRTEM and FFTs: a defocus/CTF lattice-image simulator with a true atom-column overlay, the Scherzer-defocus CTF explorer, measuring d-spacings from an FFT with a draggable ROI, how Fourier filtering can make a lattice appear from noise, and FFT versus SAED.GuideReconstruction & ResolutionHow an atom probe turns detector hits into a 3-D map of atoms: trajectory aberrations and local magnification near a precipitate, and why APT resolves atomic planes in depth but blurs laterally. Interactive explainers.GuideData & AnalysisUntangling an atom probe mass spectrum: peak overlaps and isotopic deconvolution, iso-concentration surfaces and proximity histograms, and counting statistics in a tip of a few million atoms. Interactive explainers.
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