The effect of molybdenum on the grain boundary segregation of phosphorus in steel

The beneficial effect of molybdenum on the temper embrittlement of steels is well known but has not yet been satisfactorily explained. Yu and McMahon suggested a strong interaction between molybdenum and phosphorus to form Mo-P clusters which decrease the concentration of phosphorus in the matrix and consequently the amount segregated to grain boundaries. Such clusters have as yet not been observed but this may have been owing to the insufficient resolution of conventional analytical methods. However, since no scavenging of phosphorus was observed in carbon-free Fe-Mo-P alloys, i.e. Mo alone did not affect the grain boundary concentration of phosphorus, it is improbable that the Mo-P cluster formation mechanisms can be operative. Instead, it is more likely that a requisite for the scavenging of phosphorus is the formation of Mo carbides in the steel. This work was undertaken to determine the distribution of phosphorus in two similar Fe-Mo-P alloys, one of which contained carbon while the other was carbon-free. The emphasis of the study was to determine the interaction of phosphorus with molybdenum and molybdenum carbides in the steel. Field-ion microscopy combined with atom probe microanalysis was used for this purpose. The atom-by-atom sampling method and the near-atomic spatial resolution of the FIM/atom probe make this instrument ideally suited for this type of investigations