HR EBSD vs. Conventional EBSD

It is well understood that residual strain affects most aspects of a material’s performance. Standard SEM based EBSD primarily provides maps of the spatial distribution of crystal orientation, i.e. crystallographic texture and nearest neighbour misorientation also known as meso-structure. We know that these factors contribute to the mechanical properties of polycrystalline materials and that they arise from the orientation relationship between the internal stress state and the crystal slip systems.

Clearly there is a need to understand the details of a material’s stress state but attempts using conventional EBSD have only yielded qualitative and semi-quantitative results.

With the introduction of cross correlation based HR EBSD we can now quantitatively map the internal stress state and reveal the interaction between the applied load and the features of the internal structure.

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How It Works

CrossCourt4 takes as its input data high quality EBSD patterns from any EBSD system. Cross Correlation (XCF) methods are then used to measure relative changes in the patterns due to distortion in the crystal lattice caused by stress. The results generated include several measures of data quality as well as the entire relative distortion matrix for each data point. Traditional EBSD methods using the Hough Transform are sensitive to 0.5° compared to XCF at 0.006°.

The software has a unique, clean and uncluttered user interface ensuring the focus stays on your data and its visualization. A novel method for driving the application through navigation widgets eliminates the need for long menu bars and confusing item selection. Designed to work on multiprocessor workstations it will automatically scale according to the CPU hardware available. It is also touch enabled for use on high powered Windows tablets.  It can be delivered in various combinations and configurations to suit your analytical needs.

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Applications of HR EBSD

Our customers are already using CrossCourt4 to assess the efficiencies of fuel and solar cells as well as the behaviours of optoelectronic, ferroelectric and piezoelectric devices. Failure analysis is benefiting from new insights into crack nucleation and propagation and the effect of thermal and mechanical strains near inclusions. Others are looking at thin film growth, including thermal strains and misfit dislocation numbers.

We have a library of application notes highlighting examples of HR EBSD and Strain Analysis in use by various research groups, institutions and individuals across the globe.

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Quality of Results

CrossCourt4 produces two map types that provide insights into the quality and confidence of the XCF result: the XCF Peak Height and the Mean Angular Error map.

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World Class Support

You’re just a click away from the world’s leading experts in the field of HR EBSD. Our technology uses mature analytical methods and our legacy goes back to the earliest days of EBSD.  We currently have over 60 CrossCourt systems installed across the globe, many at major material’s research facilities, universities and government national laboratories forming a powerful and knowledgeable community.

Take a look at our team page and meet the individuals making up BLG Vantage and some of the scientists associated with the advancement of the technique.  We are here to support your material analysis studies and help find solutions in your efforts to better characterize material properties and behaviors. We have also included an extensive set of resources to help you understand the technique.

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What’s New In CrossCourt Rapide?

We are excited to announce a new addition to our product line: CrossCourt Rapide.  We are now taking full advantage of the advanced multithreading capabilities of GPU technology for cross-correlation and remapping processing. During our bench tests we were able to see significant increases in speed -between 2 and 10 times speed improvement over the equivalent CPU calculation for cross-correlation and an astonishing 20-40 times increase for Remapping!

Core and New Features At A Glance

XCF Cross Correlation Function

As the heart of CrossCourt is the Cross Correlation Function (XCF) defining the HR EBSD technique. This enables CrossCourt to be 80 times more sensitive than conventional EBSD and with a suitable GPU up to 10 times faster than CPU calculations.

Remapping

Remapping provides a second pass at the XCF process and is able to discriminate large lattice rotations from strain effects, typically observed in metals. With CrossCourt Rapide expect to see between 20-40 times speed improvements over CPU equivalents!

High Resolution KAM

We are able to obtain crystallographic misorientations with a sensitivity of 0.006 degrees. This becomes dramatically noticeable in HR Kernel Average Misorientation Map

Stress & Strain Maps

Measure strain and stress in your material quantitively. Elastic strain sensitivity better than 2 parts in 10,000 and residual stress at a  spatial resolution of 100nm.

Dislocation Density and GND’s

HR EBSD can detect the presence of dislocations because the strain field associated with a dislocation produces a lattice rotation which is part of, and can be extracted from, the deformation tensor.  From here is is possible to examine Geometrically Necessary Dislocations.

Line Scan and 1D Data Extraction

With the release of CrossCourt 4.5 we have added the ability to extract line scans from 2D datasets and render results in the form of line charts –for all data display templates.

Integrated Help

CrossCourt now includes comprehensive integrated help documentation -right at the click of a button.

Examples of the CrossCourt desktop highlighting the clean user interface and emphasis on data visualization.

Complete list of CrossCourt 4.5 New Features

Full description of all CrossCourt features

Request technical specs and benchmarks for Rapide