X-ray diffraction contrast tomography: a novel technique for three-dimensional grain mapping of polycrystals. II. The combined case

Abstract

By simultaneous acquisition of the transmitted and the diffracted beams, the applicability of the previously introduced diffraction contrast tomography technique [Ludwig, Schmidt, Lauridsen & Poulsen (2008).J. Appl. Cryst.41, 302–309] can be extended to the case of undeformed polycrystalline samples containing more than 100 grains per cross section. The grains are still imaged using the occasionally occurring diffraction contribution to the X-ray attenuation coefficient, which can be observed as a reduction in the intensity of the transmitted beam when a grain fulfils the diffraction condition. Automating the segmentation of the extinction spot images is possible with the additional diffracted beam information, even in the presence of significant spot overlap. By pairing the corresponding direct (`extinction') and diffracted beam spots a robust sorting and indexing approach has been implemented. The analysis procedure is illustrated on a real data set and the result is validated by comparison with a two-dimensional grain map obtained by electron backscatter diffraction.