Characterization of industrially produced galvannealed coating using cross-sectional specimen in TEM

Galvannealed coated sheet steels are extensively used in the automotive industry due to their inherent advantages, as compared to other zinc based coating, such as excellent spot weldability, good corrosion resistance and better paintability. Despite the above advantages, galvannealed coating suffers from poor formability due to the presence of hard and brittle Fe–Zn intermetallic phases. The formability of the coating depends on the amount and orientation of different Fe–Zn intermetallic phases. The present study deals with the characterization of an industrially produced galvannealed coating using cross-sectional specimen in a Transmission Electron Microscope. From the selected area diffraction patterns obtained in Transmission Electron Microscope, the orientations of the delta phase were calculated.