Can we make EBSD easier?

Ever since I started working with EBSD back in the mid-1990s, it has been a technique that has challenged and delighted in equal measure. The bottom line is that EBSD is not easy: there are strict demands on sample preparation, the highly tilted geometry isn’t exactly ideal, there’s a requirement to understand at least a little crystallography and then the results – well, where do you start? Yet at the same time, the challenge is part of the appeal – when you collect a high-quality dataset from a difficult sample and extract the key microstructural properties that would not be possible with any other technique, then it is immensely satisfying.

EBSD mid-1990s style. Results from a semi-automated EBSD analysis of a quartz shear zone, showing a polarised light micrograph (left) and an EBSD-derived high angle boundary map of the same area. The map was constructed from 738 individual EBSD measurements (about 2 days’ work) and the subsequent calculation and plotting of 1912 boundary misorientations (many further days’ work). Taken from Trimby et al. (1998), Journal of Structural Geology, 20.

As the leading EBSD company, we continually strive to improve our EBSD products; often this means adding functionality or improving the performance, but we also aim to make our EBSD systems easier for customers to use. This can mean many things – better technology (such as more sensitive and faster detectors), innovations within the EBSD software, an improved workflow and user interface, or simply better training and education. There is no single solution, but the end goal is clear – can we help our customers to measure easily and reliably the key properties in their samples every time, with minimal effort?

We are working hard on many fronts to reach this goal, and there will be various product developments that will deliver great benefits to our customers in the coming months and years, but I want to focus on one topic in this blog – education. For a newcomer to EBSD, the technique can be extremely daunting. What sample preparation technique is going to work best? What geometry should I use in my SEM? What beam conditions are going to give optimum results? How do I set up the indexing parameters? How do I know if the data I have collected are any good? The list could go on and on – these are the sorts of decisions that an experienced EBSD operator would be making intuitively every time they analyse a sample, but to the newcomer, it is hard to know where to start.

This is why we have spent a lot of time in the past 2 years developing easily accessible content that can help our EBSD customers, including blogs, webinars, tutorials and dedicated “Tips and Tricks” videos. Much of that content is available on our main website – here.

Now, we have added to that list a fully refreshed and updated ebsd.com website.

The ebsd.com website was first published almost 20 years ago. It has always been an educational site: it introduces newcomers to the EBSD technique, shows how it works, demonstrates what it can be used for and, for those that have access to an EBSD system, gives practical advice on how to collect and interpret EBSD data. However, EBSD is a constantly evolving technique, and the site has had to be significantly revised a number of times, most recently in 2016.

Fast forward to today, and it feels as if EBSD is developing at a faster rate than ever, with new indexing techniques, new ways of interrogating data and an ever-expanding array of applications. So, in response, we have completely overhauled the ebsd.com website: it has a new appearance, a new structure and almost completely new content. We have tried to include many of the latest advances in the EBSD community, covering topics like Dictionary (and Spherical) Indexing, in-situ experiments, new detector technologies and transmission Kikuchi diffraction. In addition, we have dedicated a large part of the website to practical information: how to prepare samples, how best to set up your SEM for EBSD, how to benefit from the various advanced tools in our AZtecHKL and AZtecCrystal software and how to perform specific tasks such as grain size measurement or characterising deformation.

The next challenge is to keep the site relevant and up to date. We are continually adding new content, and this will soon include a series of short animations that will provide a simple overview of the EBSD technique; these should be going live around the same time as this blog, but you can get a preview of one of the animations below. For someone of very limited artistic talent, these dynamic cartoons have been quite a challenge but lots of fun to create – hopefully they will also help people to understand EBSD better and to make the technique that little bit easier. Which, after all, is our main objective!