Combined EBSD/EDS tomography in a dual-beam FIB/FEG-SEM

An automated method for collecting combined three-dimensional (3D) electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD)/energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) data sets on a dual-beam focused ion beam (FIB)/field emission gun scanning electron microscope (FEG-SEM) microscope is described. The method uses simple scripting files on the dual beam to move between the EBSD collection and the FIB slicing positions, which are linked to a commercial EBSD data collection programme. The EDS data are collected simultaneously with the EBSD patterns analogous to combined two-dimensional (2D) EBSD/EDS. The technique has been successfully applied to study both the interdiffusion zone between a coating and a substrate and a complex multi-phase coating on a nickel-based superalloy sample. This analysis is shown to enable the complex grain shapes, location of precipitates and phase interconnectivity within these samples to be determined without the ambiguities associated with 2D stereographic analysis.