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Martensite, named after the German metallurgist Adolf Martens, is a class of hard minerals occurring as lathe- or plate-shaped crystals. When viewed in cross-section, the crystals appear acicular (needle-shaped), which is how they are sometimes incorrectly described. The crystals are a body-centred cubic (BCC) form of iron and carbon, and result from the rapid cooling of austenite during quenching. Because martensite is formed by very rapid quenching, very little diffusion takes place in the material and martensite is not in thermodynamic equilibrium; for this reason, martensite is not considered a phase of the material.In the 1890s, Martens studied samples of different steels under a microscope, and found that the hardest steels had a regular crystalline structure. He was the first to explain the cause of the widely differing mechanical properties of steels. Martensitic structures have since been found in many other materials.
