Advanced microstructural analysis of ferrite materials by means of electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD)

The analysis of the achieved texture is of great importance for the performance of ferrite materials, either bulk or thin films. The recently developed electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) technique enables a spatially resolved study of the crystallographic orientations by means of recording of Kikuchi patterns. To our knowledge, such a thorough EBSD analysis was not yet performed in any oxidic magnetic material, and only very recently on magnetite thin films by us. A good surface polishing/cleaning is essential for this analysis, as the method requires an undisturbed surface area for a high image quality (IQ). This information is recorded to each measured Kikuchi pattern, together with a parameter describing the quality of indexation. Here, the spatially highly resolved EBSD mappings provide additional information as compared to the standard analysis techniques, which can contribute to an optimization of the growth process. Furthermore, an analysis of the grain aspect ratio is possible which provides further insight to the microstructural dependence of the magnetic properties of ferrites.