The properties of the vast majority of materials - for example, the strength and corrosion resistance of steels used in nuclear power stations - are strongly dependent on their microstructure.

This microstructure can encompass the size, shape, orientation and internal strain of the grains or individual crystalline regions which make up the material, and thus characterisation of these parameters is key to development of new and improved materials.

Electron Backscattering Diffraction (EBSD) is a powerful tool for mapping the microstructure of materials and has been applied to a wide range of projects within NPL since the technique was reintroduced to NPL two years ago. Exploiting the resolution of the new scanning electron microscope, EBSD can look at both the structure of nanopowders over an area of a few square micrometres, and at the structure of metals over areas a million times larger. This talk will explain briefly what EBSD is and how it works, and then focus on applications within NPL which range from Raman spectroscopy nanoprobes, through fixed point temperature cells, to hardmetal cutting tools.

Ken Mingard joined NPL in 2005 after 15 years in industry working in research and development, mostly in the production and use of metal powders. Starting with sprayforming of aluminium he has worked his way up in density through steels, cobalt and now at NPL works on tungsten carbide amongst other materials. On joining NPL he returned to electron microscopy as a characterisation technique, having last used this extensively while studying high temperature superconductors for his D.Phil. at Oxford.