Abstract
The present work has been to study the effect of different finalizing preparation techniques on the amount of retained austenite measured with Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) and X-Ray-Diffraction (XRD) analysis. A supermartensitic stainless steel with an austenite content of 40 % was prepared with electropolishing, ion sputtering and chemical mechanical polishing. It is conclusive that electropolishing is the suitable preparation technique. By using electropolishing there was obtained 40 % retained austenite, in contrast there was obtained 14 % using ion sputtering and 25 % with chemical mechanical polishing.