LAUSR

Obtaining an accurate and precise measure of orientation in a polycrystalline material is a crucial characterization step in making structure/property connections in functional materials. In the past, understanding polycrystalline texture was frequently explored using selected area electron channeling patterns (SACP). By tilting the electron beam in fine increments on a polished specimen, observed changes in BSE contrast can be described by a superposition of Bloch waves which are highly dependent on the orientation of the crystal lattice. Recording this intensity directly onto a sphere, a map of orientation space can be made. Tilting the electron beam to large angles while maintaining a fixed position was nontrivial and suffered from spherical aberration, limiting both the spatial resolution and angular field of view (FOV). Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) is relatively immune to these challenges, and with computational assistance has become a turnkey technique to produce high (although anisotropic) spatial resolution orientation maps. However, angular resolution has remained limited by the pixel density of the detector and the inherent geometric distortions from recording electrons from a tilted specimen onto an oblique detector. In this work, we will show how an orientation map complementary to EBSD can be generated from a stage-rocked sample in a conventional SEM, where full rastered BSE images are recorded at each tilt/rotation.