Energy filtering in EBSD

Abstract

Most recent advances in EBSD have centered on increasing automated indexing speed through the prudent use of modern computing capabilities and advances in camera technology. Post-processing routines are also becoming more encompassing and robust. However, few significant gains have been made towards obtaining a better understanding of the underlying physics of the phenomenon. The community's handle on the physics stems largely from lessons learned in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and from electron channeling pattern (ECP) experiments that, while very insightful, do not complete the picture of EBSD. A better understanding of EBSD physics may lead to significant advances in the technology. Accordingly, in this chapter we discuss our efforts to investigate the formation of EBSD patterns using an energy filter. Others have attempted to filter patterns but we are aware of only one previous publication on the subject (Mancuso et al. 1994). There is a whole field of work on understanding the formation of backscatter diffraction patterns and the measurement of energy-filtered patterns at much lower energies (typically up to 2 keV) than is usual for EBSD. This research is related to surface science and Auger spectroscopy. This work is reviewed in Pronin and Gomoyunova (1998) and will not be discussed further here. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009. All rights reserved.