Analysis of stresses and crystal structure in the surface layer of hexagonal polycrystalline materials: a new methodology based on grazing incidence diffraction

The multireflection grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction (MGIXD) method is commonly used to determine a stress gradient in thin surface layers (about 1–20 µm for metals). In this article, the development of MGIXD to enable the determination not only of stresses but also of the c/a ratio and the a₀ strain-free lattice parameter in hexagonal polycrystalline materials is presented and tested. The new procedure was applied for the results of measurements performed using a laboratory X-ray diffractometer and synchrotron radiation. The evolution of stresses and lattice parameters with depth was determined for Ti and Ti-alloy samples subjected to different mechanical surface treatments. A very good agreement of the results obtained using three different wavelengths of synchrotron radiation as well as classical X-rays (Cu Kα radiation) was found.