Measurement and mapping of small changes of crystal orientation by electron backscattering diffraction

We have explored the possibility of measuring small changes of orientation within grains by electron backscattering diffraction (EBSD), in the scanning electron microscope. Conventional orientation maps (using EBSD) index the orientation of each position on the sample separately. This does not give accurate results for small differences of orientation. We have studied methods of measuring small changes in orientation by measuring the change from one EBSD pattern to the next directly, without indexing either. Previous workers have measured the change of position of a zone axis in the EBSD pattern. We have compared this with an alternative method, which we show to be superior, of measuring the shift of the peaks in the Hough transform from one diffraction pattern to the next. This means that we are measuring the change of orientation of sets of crystal planes within the grain, rather than measuring the change of orientation of zone axes. We show that it is possible, with a standard EBSD configuration, to measure the shift of the Kikuchi bands to a precision of about a 10th of a pixel, which corresponds to a change of orientation in the sample of about 0.1 mrad (0.006 degrees ).