Quick orientation measurements on bulk specimen with high lateral resolution by acquiring and analysing so-called Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) patterns, (also called Kikuchi patterns).

Requirements for EBSD

• Primary electron beam with high energy (default 20 keV, down to 10 keV possible) and intensity (beam current 0.5nA or more)
• Working distance to SEM polepiece and distance of EBSD detector as low as geometrically possible due to sample size limitations (<= 10mm)
• Specimen steeply tilted (by default 70° , 45° to 80° possible)
• Conductive surface essential, thin carbon coating if necessary
• Flat surface due to tilting, no deformation layer
• metal sections prepared conventionally must be additionally polished to reduce deformation layer (mostly with a nano-sized silica suspension like OP-CHEM)

Characteristics of measurement, possible results:

• lateral resolution down to some ten nm, depending on atomic number
• information depth between 50 and 100 nm
• measured orientations acquired point-by-point in an orientation file automatically
• data can be evaluated without restrictions offline after measurements
• acquisition time 10 to 100 points/second, depending on material/surface quality

• from the data, entire set of microstructure quantities can be obtained:

  content of phases, size and shape of grains, misorientation within deformed grains

  • grain boundary type (misorientation angle, CSL classification)
  • texture results like pole figures, inverse pole figures, ODF, fractions, indices…