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Electron Backscatter Diffraction Technique: Fundamentals to Applications

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Electron Microscopy in Science and Engineering

Part of the book series: IITK Directions ((IITKD,volume 6))

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Abstract

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has always been an essential tool for the qualitative analysis of microstructure of any material. With the advent of SEM-based techniques like energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), extensive quantitative characterization of the microstructure of a material has also become possible. In principle, EBSD technique gathers only the crystal orientation data of each and every scanned point; however, this orientation data contains significant information in itself and it has become a transformative technique for the characterization of crystallographic materials. First and foremost, orientation information allows one to ascertain the presence and spatial distribution of various phases in a material. With the orientation data, one can easily obtain quantitative information about grain size, morphology, and phase fractions. Orientation information also allows one to extract misorientation data, which in turn provides details about various types of grain and phase boundaries in the material. Orientation data has also enabled researchers to extract micro-textural information about the material, which includes, but not limited to, pole figures and orientation distribution function (ODF). This paper will give a brief glimpse of the capability of this, now ubiquitous, technique for microstructural and textural characterization of materials.

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Acknowledgements

All the EBSD data was generated using the facilities in the Advanced Centre for Material Sciences (ACMS) of IIT Kanpur. Mr. Sivakumar assisted in EBSD data acquisition for the Inconel 718 sample. EBSD of duplex steel was acquired by Prince Setia. Saquib Abdullah, Dripta Dutta, and R. Sarvesha assisted in the EBSD data acquisition and analysis of quartz in case study (B). A part of the work in case study (B) is supported by a DST Swarnajayanti Fellowship (DST/SJF/E&ASA-01/2015-16), awarded to Santanu Misra. Case study (C) is part of the project funded by BRNS, under sanction No. 36(2)/14/39/2016-BRNS/6047.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Grain Boundary Engineering Lab, Materials Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur, Kanpur, UP, 208016, India

    Shashank Shekhar & Sandeep Sahu

  2. Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 21, Canada

    Nitin Kumar Sharma

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, IIT Kanpur, Kanpur, UP, 208016, India

    Santanu Misra

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  1. Shashank Shekhar
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  2. Nitin Kumar Sharma
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Correspondence to Shashank Shekhar .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India

    Krishanu Biswas

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India

    Sri Sivakumar

  3. Department Materials Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India

    Nilesh Gurao

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Shekhar, S., Sharma, N.K., Sahu, S., Misra, S. (2022). Electron Backscatter Diffraction Technique: Fundamentals to Applications. In: Biswas, K., Sivakumar, S., Gurao, N. (eds) Electron Microscopy in Science and Engineering. IITK Directions, vol 6. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5101-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5101-4_4

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