Adam J. Schwartz – författare

Electron backscatter diffraction is a very powerful and relatively new materials characterization technique aimed at the determination of crystallographic texture, grain boundary character distributions, lattice strain, phase identification, and much more. The purpose of this book is to provide the fundamental basis for electron backscatter diffraction in materials science, the current state of both hardware and software, and illustrative examples of the applications of electron backscatter diffraction to a wide-range of materials including undeformed and deformed metals and alloys, ceramics, and superconductors.The text has been substantially revised from the first edition, and the authors have kept the format as close as possible to the first edition text. The new developments covered in this book include a more comphrensive coverage of the fundamentals not covered in the first edition or other books in the field, the advances in hardware and software since the first edition was published, and current examples of application of electron backscatter diffraction to solve challenging problems in materials science and condensed-matter physics.

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 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 of sales worldwide has been dramatic. This has accompanied widening the growth applicability in materials scienceproblems 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 transmission electron microscope (TEM) or x-ray diffraction investigations. The benefits lie in the fact that the spatial resolution on new field emission scanning electron microscopes (SEM) can approach 50 nm, but spatial extent can be as large a centimeter or greater with a computer controlled stage and montagingofthe images. Additional benefits include the relative ease and low costofattaching EBSD hardware to new or existing SEMs. Electron backscatter diffraction is also known as backscatter Kikuchi diffraction (BKD), or electron backscatter pattern technique (EBSP). Commercial names for the automation include Orientation Imaging Microscopy (OIM™) and Automated Crystal Orientation Mapping (ACOM).