Summary

• In crystalline materials the atoms are arranged to repeat regularly in space.

• Polycrystalline materials consist of an aggregate of single crystal grains.  Many important engineering materials and minerals are polycrystalline.

• Microstructure refers to the assemblage of grains and other constituents such as pores and precipitates.

• Electron backscatter diffraction is a technique for the scanning electron microscope which allows crystal orientations to be measured.

• Maps of crystal orientation can be collected using EBSD.  They remove any ambiguity regarding  the recognition of grains and grain boundaries in the sample.

• The grains in polycrystalline material are usually not randomly oriented, and crystallographic texturing can confer special properties on materials.

• EBSD is as an important technique for texture analysis because it allows the relation between texture and microstructure to be studied.

• Grain boundaries are the interfaces between grains.  Boundaries formed between grains with particular orientation relationships to one another can have desirable properties.

• EBSD can characterise these boundaries and measure the distribution of various boundary types in a sample.

• EBSD is a technique for microstructural analysis.

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