Chemical composition of nano-phases studied by anomalous small-angle X-ray scattering: Application to oxide nano-particles in ODS steels

•Anomalous small-angle X-ray scattering (ASAXS) is a non-destructive technique.•ASAXS gives access to chemical information of nano-objects.•A straightforward procedure is proposed for ASAXS data treatment.•The procedure is applied to nano-oxides in ODS steels.

Anomalous small-angle X-ray scattering (ASAXS) is a technique developed in the 1980s giving access to chemical information of nano-objects besides characteristic features like size and volume fraction given by classical SAXS. ASAXS is an element-selective technique based on the anomalous variation of the scattering factor near the absorption edge of one chosen element. A simple approach is proposed to extract chemical information from anomalous SAXS data. To illustrate the procedure, data treatment is applied to discriminate between different possible phases that may form nano-oxides in oxide-dispersion-strengthened (ODS) steels.