International Tables for Crystallography

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Electron backscatter diffraction
Stuart I. Wright and Marc De Graef. International Tables for Crystallography (2022). Vol. C [ doi:10.1107/S1574870722004554 ]

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) modality which, over the past thirty years, has become a core microstructure characterization technique in both the materials and geological fields. EBSD typically produces 2D maps (or 3D volumes in the case of serial sectioning) of the orientations of the constituent crystallites of a sample with respect to an external reference frame. The chapter starts by describing the experimental geometry of the sample and detector inside the chamber of a scanning electron microscope (SEM). This is followed by a review of the kinematical and dynamical theories of electron scattering which, along with the detector geometry, can be used to predict EBSD patterns, including the diffuse background intensity. Since EBSD produces orientations, several commonly used orientation representations and parametrizations are reviewed before explaining how the crystal orientation is extracted from the experimental patterns, using either Hough-transform-based feature extraction, or the whole-pattern-matching approaches known as dictionary indexing and spherical indexing. To obtain accurate results it is crucial that the sample surface be properly prepared and a number of standard techniques for obtaining an optimal sample surface finish are described. Commercial and open-source software solutions for data analysis are described as well as a number of commonly used data formats. The chapter concludes with several examples of applications taken from both the materials and geological literature, and brief ruminations on the future of the EBSD characterization technique.


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About International Tables for Crystallography

International Tables for Crystallography is the definitive resource and reference work for crystallography. The multi-volume series comprises articles and tables of data relevant to crystallographic research and to applications of crystallographic methods in all sciences concerned with the structure and properties of materials.