Electron Backscatter Diffraction in Materials Science (Repost)

Crystallographic texture or preferred orientation has long been known to strongly influence material properties. Historically, the means of obtaining such texture data has been though the use of x-ray or neutron diffraction for bulk texture measurements, or transmission electron microscopy (TEM) or electron channeling for local crystallographic information. In recent years, we have seen the emergence of a new characterization technique for probing the microtexture of materials. This advance has come about primarily through the automated indexing of electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) patterns. The first commercially available system was introduced in 1994, and since then the growth of sales worldwide has been dramatic. This has accompanied widening applicability in materials science problems such as microtexture, phase identification, grain boundary character distribution, deformation microstructures, etc. and is evidence that this technique can, in some cases, replace more time-consuming TEM or X-ray diffraction investigations. The purpose of this book is to provide the fundamental basis for EBSD. The formation and interpretation of EBSD patterns and the gnomonic projection are described as the framework for materials characterization using EBSD.