Characterizing the nano-structure and defect structure of nano-scaled non-ferrous structural alloys

The presence and interaction of nanotwins, geometrically necessary dislocations, and grain boundaries play a key role in the mechanical properties of nanostructured crystalline materials. Therefore, it is vital to determine the orientation, width and distance of nanotwins, the angle and axis of grain boundary misorientations as well as the type and the distributions of dislocations in an automatic and statistically meaningful fashion in a relatively large area. In this paper, such details are provided using a transmission electron microscope-based orientation microscopy technique called ASTAR™/precession electron diffraction. The remarkable spatial resolution of this technique (~ 2 nm) enables highly detailed characterization of nanotwins, grain boundaries and the configuration of dislocations. This orientation microscopy technique provides the raw data required for the determination of these parameters. The procedures to post-process the ASTAR™/PED datasets in order to obtain the important (and currently largely hidden) details of nanotwins as well as quantifications of dislocation density distributions are described in this study.