Automated Crystal Orientation Measurement (ACOM) by Backscatter Kikuchi Diffraction (BKD) in the SEM, also named “Au to mated EBSD”, has be come a stan dard tool in ma te ri als sci ence dur ing the last de cade. The prin ci pal ob jec tives of ACOM are a quan ti ta tive de scrip tion of the microstructure on a grain-spe cific level by the de ter mi na tion of crys tal ori en ta tions, misorientations, the char ac ter of grain bound aries, and de rived en ti ties. The grain ori en ta tions are com monly de picted in pseudo-col ors on the scan ning grid to form Crystal Orientation Maps (COM) of the microstructure. Stereological as well as ori en ta tion data, as sen si tive in di ca tors of the pro duc tion pro cess, are readily avail able from COM. ACOM thus en ables a ma jor prog ress in the quan ti ta tive char ac ter iza tion of microstructure. The ben e fits are the cor re la tion of crys tal lat tice ori en ta tions and phases (from ACOM) with the mor phol ogy (from the SEM mi cro graph) and el e ment com po si tion (from EDS anal y sis in an an a lyt i cal SEM) on a submicron scale. Ex am ples of ap pli ca tion are given such as com pet i tive co lum nar grain growth in dam a scene cop per metallization lines, phase dis crim i na tion on metal sam ples, and lo cal tex ture in hot ex truded as well as re verse and cross-rolled magnesium based alloys.
