Characterisation of glass ceramic wasteforms using quantitative image analysis of electron micrographs

Abstract Multi-phase material systems make up a significant proportion of the currently proposed and researched wasteforms for sequestration of heterogeneous nuclear material feeds. Quantification of the components for such multi-phase assemblages is typically performed using diffraction-based Rietveld methods, many of which necessitate long measurement times of several hours. Furthermore, careful additions of an internal standard are typically required, to facilitate inclusion of amorphous phases in the quantification. The application of an image analysis method has been investigated, using the z-contrast greyscale of back-scattered electron micrographs to determine the relative quantities of component phases in a suite of monolithic phosphate glass ceramic wasteforms. This work demonstrates an alternate methodology for accelerated quantification which could be applied to other heterogeneous wasteforms and multi-phase materials. Graphical abstract