Electron Backscatter Diffraction: A Powerful Tool for Phase Identification in the SEM

EBSD in the SEM has been developed into a tool that can provide identification of unknown crystalline phases with a spatial resolution that is better than one micrometer. This technique has been applied to a wide range of materials. Use of the HOLZ rings in the EBSD patterns has enabled the reduced unit cell to be determined from unindexed EBSD patterns. This paper introduces EBSD for phase identification and illustrates the technique with examples from metal joining and particle analysis. Reduced unit cell determination from EBSD patterns is then discussed.