Looking for the elusive alpha tin phase

DOI

The characteristics of metal alloys have always been considered crucial for the sound quality of organ pipes. Tin-rich materials were studied for conservation issues, like the so-called “tin pest” -a consequence of a tin crystal structure change. “Tin pest” is indeed an allotropic transformation of tin, from beta-phase (tetragonal structure) to alpha-phase (diamond-cubic structure). This phase transformation, spontaneous below 13.2 °C, is strongly accelerated by lower temperatures. Recently, we studied a wide set of tin-based pipe fragments but no alpha-phase was found. We thus propose to study a real and different commercial specimens, as a function of the temperature, after 24 hours at -50°C. Our measurements want to infer information on the degradation process, in order to make an assessment of neutron techniques as a diagnostic tool the conservation of organ pipes.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1720120-3
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/105605310
Provenance
Creator Dr Daniela Di Martino; Dr Antonella Scherillo; Dr Enrico Perelli Cippo; Dr Ivan da Silva Gonzalez; Professor Giuseppe Gorini
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2022
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Photon- and Neutron Geosciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2019-10-10T07:30:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2019-10-15T10:08:30Z