University of Groningen
Precipitate evolution in grain oriented electrical steel and high strength low alloy steel
Zhang, Xukai
DOI:
10.33612/diss.133163231
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Publication date: 2020
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Citation for published version (APA):
Zhang, X. (2020). Precipitate evolution in grain oriented electrical steel and high strength low alloy steel. University of Groningen. https://doi.org/10.33612/diss.133163231
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Acknowledgements
Time flies! In a twinkling of an eye, my PhD study life is coming to an end. The past four years have been long and short, full of ups and downs, and more rewarding and growing. I would like to offer my thanks to all those who cared, supported and helped me in my research and life during my PhD period.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Bart J. Kooi. I would like to thank you for offering me the opportunity to start my PhD study in Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces (NMI) group at University of Groningen. You are always there to help when I have problems, providing valuable suggestions during discussion on experimental results and analysis, helping to contact equipments in other institutes. I want to thank you for the freedom and encouragement you gave to me, with which I finally succeed in developing the matrix dissolution method. I really appreciate your revision on presentation, paper and thesis one sentence by one sentence. I could not complete my PhD project smoothly without your guidance, help and support. Your scientifically strict attitudes and critical thinking inspire for the whole life.
Secondly, I want to thank my second promoter Prof. George Palasantzas. Thank you for your care for my research and suggestions during our group meetings. It is also very nice to talk with you on other affairs.
I am grateful to my colleagues in NMI group who gave me help and supports during my PhD period. Gert, thank you for your help on the setup of my experiments and teaching me to use various types of equipments on sample preparation and characterization. Jamo and Sytze, thank you for your help on (S)TEM operation and training. Weiteng, we have been in the same office for 4 years, I appreciate your encouragement during my hard time and nice daily discussions. Heng and Xiaotian, thank you for your companion and help. I really enjoy the happy times we have had together in Groningen for dinners and games. Majid, Zahra, Daniel and Atul, thank you for your ever help. I would like to extend my thanks to the former colleagues, Bin, Lijuan, Vitaly and Paul, for a lot of useful suggestions both in research and life. I want to offer my special thanks to my paranymphs, Xiaotian and Sytze, for helping me to take care of the preparations for the defense.
I would also like to thank my collaborators in other institutes or groups who helped me a lot on experiments and data analysis. I am grateful to Winfried Kranendonk from Tata Steel. Thank you for helping coordinating the material production, experiments in Tata Steel and meetings, and thank you for your contribution and useful suggestions on the papers. I would like to express my thanks to other collaborators in Tata Steel, Stefan Melzer for the discussion on GO electrical steel, Jean Campaniello for the discussion on HSLA steel, Jan Wormann for the technical help on carbon replica preparation and filtering experiments, and Harini Pattabhiraman for performing the MatCalc simulations, Steven Celotto, Corrie
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van Hoek for the technical support and discussion. My thanks go to S. Erik Offerman, Chrysoula loannidou, Alfonso Navarro-López, Ad van Well form Delft University of Technology for support related to sample annealing, SANS experiments and data analysis. I wish to show my appreciation to Robert M. Dalgliesh from STFC, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK for the help on SANS experiments. The help on the GND analysis provided by Runguang Li from University of Science and Technology Beijing, China, was greatly appreciated. I would like to thank Václav Ocelík for EBSD training and data analysis. I would like to acknowledge Marc Stuart for the help of carbon replica preparation. I want to extend my thanks to the former bachelor student Johannes Tjepkema for the assistance with some of my experiments.
I wish to show my appreciation to the reading committee of my thesis, Prof. Gerhard Dehm, Prof. Yutao Pei and Prof. Jilt Sietsma for taking your time in assessing my thesis and providing me the valuable comments and suggestions. I would like to offer my thanks to Annette Bor from NWO, Viktoria Savran and Marcella Klouwens from M2i for organizing meetings and providing help on other affairs. I want to thank my master degree promotors Prof. Linzhong Zhuang and Prof. Mingxing Guo for your care on my research and life. I would also like to express my thanks to my friends I met in Groningen without whose company I could not have made these years so enjoyable and memorable, thank you, Rongjing, Jian Gao, Hong Lian, Qian Chen, Xiaolan, Jian Sun, Na Li, Lu Ge, Liang Yang, Yidai, Jiacong, Peiliang, Pu Yang, Ling Liu, Huatang, Liqiang, Xin Zhao, Bei Tian, Miao Guo, Wenbo, Jing Wu, Zhijun, Yingfen, Hongyan, Hongyu, Junjie, Yu Li and Gaojie. Lastly and importantly, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my parents and other family members for your infinite love, unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my whole PhD period.
Xukai Zhang Groningen August, 2020
