Dr. Stuart Wright, Senior Scientist, EDAX

In interacting with Rudy Wenk of the University of California Berkeley to get his take on the word “texture” as it pertains to preferred orientation reminds me of some other terminologies with orientation maps that Rudy helped me with several years ago.

Joe Michael of Sandia National Lab has commented to me a couple of times his objection to the term “IPF map”. As you may know, the term is commonly used to describe a color map reconstructed from OIM data where the color denotes the crystallographic axis aligned with the sample normal as shown below. Joe points out that the term “orientation map” or “crystal direction map” or something similar would be much more appropriate and he is absolutely right.

The reason behind the name “IPF map”, is that I hi-jacked some of my code for drawing inverse pole figures (IPFs) as a basis to start writing the code to create the color-coded maps. Thus, we started using the term internally (it was TSL at the time – prior to EDAX purchasing TSL) and then it leaked out publicly and the name stuck – my apologies to Joe. We later added the ability to color the microstructure based on the crystal direction aligned with any specified sample direction as shown below.

The idea for this map was germinated from a paper I saw presented by David Dingley where a continuous color coding schemed was devised by assigning red, green and blue to the three axes of Rodrigues-Frank space: D. J. Dingley, A. Day, and A. Bewick (1991) “Application of Microtexture Determination using EBSD to Non Cubic Crystals”, Textures and Microstructures, 14-18, 91-96. In this case, the microstructure had been digitized and a single orientation measured for each grain using EBSD. Unfortunately, I only have gray scale images of these results.

We didn’t realize it at the time; but, an approach based on the crystallographic direction had already been done in Japan. In this work, the stereographic unit triangle (i.e. an inverse pole figure) was used in a continues color coding scheme were red is assigned to the <110> direction, blue to <111> and yellow to <100> and then points lying between these three corners of the stereographic triangle are combinations of these three colors. This color coding was used to shade grains in digitized maps of the microstructure according to their orientation. Y. Inokuti, C. Maeda and Y. Ito (1986) “Observation of Generation of Secondary Nuclei in a Grain Oriented Silicon Steel Sheet Illustrated by Computer Color Mapping”, Journal of the Japan Institute of Metals, 50, 874-8. The images published in this paper received awards in 1986 by the Japanese Institute of Metals and TMS.

I thought these were the first colored orientation maps constructed until Rudy later corrected me (not the first, nor certainly the last time). He sent me some examples of mappings of orientation onto a microstructure by “hatching” or coloring a pole figure and then using those patterns or colors to shade the microstructure as traced from micrographs. H.-R. Wenk (1965) “Gefügestudie an Quarzknauern und -lagen der Tessiner Kulmination”, Schweiz. Mineralogische und Petrographische Mitteilungen, 45, 467-515 and even earlier in B. Sander (1950) Einführung in die Gefügekunde Springer Verlag. 402-409 . Sanders entitled this type of mapping and analysis as AVA (Achsenvertilungsanalyse auf Deutsch or Axis Distribution Analysis in English).

Such maps were forerunners to the “IPF maps” of today (you could actually call them “PF maps”) to which we are so familiar with. It turns out our wanderin’s in A Search for Structure (Cyril Stanley Smith, 1991, MIT Press) have actually not been “aimless” at all but have helped us gain real insight into that etymologically challenged world of microstructure.