Dr. Sophie Yan, Applications Engineer, EDAX
Recently, we held a webinar on Grain Analysis in OIM Analysis™. After the webinar, many users mentioned that the basic operation overview was very helpful. Since there was a very enthusiastic response, I want to take this opportunity to share these fundamental tips and tricks with the greater electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) community.
Perhaps the most popular EBSD application is grain analysis, as it’s fundamental to characterizing many materials. Because the results of grain analysis are sometimes consistent or inconsistent with other tests, it’s great to start with a basic understanding of a grain with respect to EBSD and how grain analysis works.
The definition of a grain in OIM Analysis differs from the strict academic definition, which refers to the collection of pixels within a certain orientation range. This orientation range, namely grain tolerance angle, can be changed in OIM Analysis, which is generally set to 5° by default. You can also vary the number of pixels in a grain (the default is 2). These parameters affect the result of grain size, so we should pay attention to them in the analysis. The prerequisite of grain analysis is that the data is statistically valuable. Sometimes this requires a lot of tests to achieve the goal, repetitive studies to diminish errors, or the data should be filtered or processed before the analysis (per relevant standards, accordingly).

Figure 1. A typical grain map.
A standard display for grain size analysis is the Grain Size (diameter) chart. First, the grain is fit to a circle, and then the software calculates the diameter. The data distribution range and average grain size are on the chart’s right side. The most frequent question users ask is, “What is the formula to calculate the average grain size?”. In fact, two results of the average grain size, which are calculated by two different methods, are shown. The ‘number’ method calculates the average area of each grain first (the sum area is divided by grain number values first) before it determines the diameter. In contrast, it considers different weights due to different areas for the ‘area’ method. Since large grains have larger weight percentages, it first calculates the average grain area using different weight percentages, then calculates the average grain size.
In addition to the average grain size, OIM Analysis offers a variety of charts and plots to characterize grain shape. The most popular one is the grain shape aspect ratio, an essential parameter to display the columnar grain property (grains are fit as an ellipse). In addition to the shape aspect ratio, the Grain Shape Orientation in OIM Analysis shows the angle between the long axis and the horizontal direction, which is suitable for grains with a specific growth direction.
OIM Analysis offers numerous functions. Concerning grain analysis, there are six different charts for grain size and eight for grain shapes. Some charts are not common, but they have corresponding application scenarios. If you do not know the meaning of those charts, you can query the OIM Analysis Help file to get relative information.
Grain analysis is a very common function of EBSD applications. As a webinar speaker, I enjoyed digging up some less familiar details so users could gain a deeper understanding of software operations. I look forward to continually introducing webinar topics to meet the EBSD community’s needs and make greater progress in the new year.