High-precision orientation mapping from spherical harmonic transform indexing of electron backscatter diffraction patterns

Highlights: • Spherical harmonic transform indexing of EBSD patterns can give high precision. • Improved precision gives improved performance for dislocation density estimates. • Trade-off curves for precision versus exposure time and camera binning. The angular precision of crystal orientation determination by cross-correlating dynamically simulated electron diffraction patterns with experimental patterns via spherical harmonic analysis is investigated. The best precision found in this study is 0.016°, which approaches the level reported in the literature for other high-precision electron backscatter diffraction implementations. At this angular precision, the noise floor for geometrically necessary dislocation density calculations is found to be approximately 5×10¹³ m⁻² at a 200 nm step size. Conventional Hough-transform indexing of the same raw patterns gave an angular precision of 0.156° and a dislocation noise floor of 6×10¹⁴ m⁻², an order of magnitude larger for both parameters, albeit better than is typical for Hough indexing due to the high-quality patterns used. Experimental trade-off curves of precision versus exposure time, pattern resolution (i.e. camera binning), and analysis bandwidth are also presented, allowing for optimization of data collection and analysis rates once the desired level of precision has been determined.