EP– a program for determination of crystallite orientations from TEM Kikuchi and CBED diffraction patterns

Abstract

Orientations of individual crystallites are of interest in many areas of research on polycrystalline materials (see e.g., Kocks et al., 1998). Analysis of Kikuchi patterns is one of the oldest and best established techniques of orientation determination. Convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) patterns have the same geometry as Kikuchi patterns and can be used for determining orientations if a suf®cient acquisition solid angle is available. The program EP is a user interface linked with KiKoCh ± an engine for pattern indexing and for determination of orientations. EP allows diffraction patterns to be loaded from bitmap ®les and the crystallite orientation to be obtained by marking lines with a mouse; in good quality patterns lines can be detected automatically. A similar system has been described recently by Zaefferer (2000).