Study of the effect of microstructure on the electrochemical activity ofmetal

The goal of this project is the relationship between the microstructure and the electrochemical behavior on to describe a physical based way, by systematically linking the quantified microstructural variables, and the resulting, quantified electrochemical behavior. This aim translates into a microstructural resolved electrochemical material model which provides the necessary precondition for advanced process modeling and simulation. To achieve this goal we choose the polycrystalline pure copper metal model system which in the literature and the research partners knowledge and experience hands with microstructure processing as well as the electrochemical characterization. On the basis of this model system will be the micro structure, including the crystallographic texture and the grain boundary character distribution function (GBCD), on the surface quantitated (by EBSD-SEM, and a recently developed numerical method for the determination of the 5-dimensional GBCD function on the basis of a orientation contrast image on 2D sections), and in a controlled manner be varied over the thermo-mechanical processing. The microstructure variations will then be associated with the electrochemical behavior, in that both globally dimensioned is about the macroscopic surface (via polarization experiments), as well as locally above individual grains and grain boundaries (through the development of a measurement methodology, on the basis of, among others AFM-Kelvin Probe, AFM - scanning Tunneling microscopy, scanning Vibrating Electrode Technique and microcapillary cell).