EBSD contra TEM characterization of a deformed aluminum single crystal

In recent years the development has been toward more and more microstructural characterization being done by automatic EBSD* measurements at the expense of TEM studies. This trend has been expressed very directly by Professor F.J. Humphreys: “Although I used to be a TEM-man, I now do everything I can to avoid doing TEM work” (Humphreys, 1999a).

Reasons for this trend are the advances of the EBSD technique toward faster and easier measurements, more sophisticated data representations and (very importantly) better spatial resolution of the technique. In modern FEG-SEMs the spatial resolution is estimated to be three times better than in conventional W-filament SEMs (Humphreys, 1999b) and subgrain structures of dimensions down to 0.2 µm in aluminum are analyzed (Humphreys, 1999b).

This means that characterization previously done by TEM is now being done by EBSD (Humphreys, 1999b; Terhune et al., 1999).