How can the temperatures of copper and silver smelting be determined based on multicomponent inclusions included in the tested alloy? Is it possible to create a phase diagram for 4-5 component phases? I have fragments of old (V-X century BC) products made of copper and silver. In these samples, there is a large number of micro-inclusions (from several to a dozen or so) with different chemical compositions. In copper samples, some of the inclusions are copper oxides and some are objects consisting of elements such as (elements arranged from the highest to the lowest value, above 5 wt% - I have results from EMPA): Cu-Pb-As-Bi; As-Bi-Cu-Sb; As-Pb-Sb-Bi-Cu; As-Pb-Cu. In objects made of silver there are inclusions containing: Cu-Ag; Bi-Pb-Ag-Cu; Bi-Pb-Ag; Pb-Bi-Cu; Pb-Cu. All analyzes made on EMPA close to 70-90% and EDS is always visible at the EDS.
There are several ternary phase diagrams available, but the ones that you might need may be missing. I don't think quaternary or quinary ones exist. You might draw some conclusions from binary and ternary diagrams and their extrapolation.
Another way is to take a sample from your precious objects (20 mg will do) and perform calorimetric study. If you want to preserve the objects without any damage, you can make an artificial alloy from pure elements using the chemical composition that you know. Another way is to perform phase analysis and identify chemical compounds, the one with the highest melting point will indicate the smelting temperature (pls bear in mind that for phase analysis usually small samples with flat surface are suitable, exposing e.g. a sword would be difficult).
oh...as long as your 5 phases can be described in 3D :-), i.e. 3 phases can be used at a tetrahedron and everything else (all phases are describable by them).
However, the numerous phases you (probably) observed are too far away that they all match into such a tetrahedon (I did not check them, sorry if it would work.). Why do you have so many precipitates in such a high concentration?
Do you really need all the phase diagrams? What if most of inclusions were just residue in a crucible? Clearness was not a virtue in the middle ages...
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