Development of a non-destructive depth-selective quantification method for sub-percent carbon contents in steel using negative muon lifetime analysis

The amount of C in steel, which is critical in determining its properties, is strongly influenced by steel production technology. We propose a novel method of quantifying the bulk C content in steel non-destructively using muons. This revolutionary method may be used not only in the quality control...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2024-01, Vol.14 (1), p.1797-1797, Article 1797
Main Authors: Ninomiya, Kazuhiko, Kubo, Michael Kenya, Inagaki, Makoto, Yoshida, Go, Chiu, I-Huan, Kudo, Takuto, Asari, Shunsuke, Sentoku, Sawako, Takeshita, Soshi, Shimomura, Koichiro, Kawamura, Naritoshi, Strasser, Patrick, Miyake, Yasuhiro, Ito, Takashi U., Higemoto, Wataru, Saito, Tsutomu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/638/11
639/638/903
639/766/36/1123
Humanities and Social Sciences
Lifetime
multidisciplinary
Quality control
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Steel
Steel industry
Steel production
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Summary:The amount of C in steel, which is critical in determining its properties, is strongly influenced by steel production technology. We propose a novel method of quantifying the bulk C content in steel non-destructively using muons. This revolutionary method may be used not only in the quality control of steel in production, but also in analyzing precious steel archaeological artifacts. A negatively charged muon forms an atomic system owing to its negative charge, and is finally absorbed into the nucleus or decays to an electron. The lifetimes of muons differ significantly, depending on whether they are trapped by Fe or C atoms, and identifying the elemental content at the muon stoppage position is possible via muon lifetime measurements. The relationship between the muon capture probabilities of C/Fe and the elemental content of C exhibits a good linearity, and the C content in the steel may be quantitatively determined via muon lifetime measurements. Furthermore, by controlling the incident energies of the muons, they may be stopped in each layer of a stacked sample consisting of three types of steel plates with thicknesses of 0.5 mm, and we successfully determined the C contents in the range 0.20–1.03 wt% depth-selectively, without sample destruction.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-024-52255-5