This award will partially support a conference focused on Electron Backscattered Diffraction (EBSD) planned for May 20-22, 2008, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, under the sponsorship of the Microbeam Analysis Society. EBSD is an important technique that utilizes the diffraction of high-energy electrons to determine the orientations of crystals in natural and synthetic materials. Diffraction patterns, which are collected with a sensitive camera, can be indexed and combined with a variety of imaging techniques to analyze spatial variations in the texture of single phase and polyphase materials. The resulting data can yield information about both crystal structure and orientation. This approach has major applications in both material science and geology related to understanding everything from crystallization processes to microstructures that record material histories and affect material properties (such as strength and conductivity).
A meeting of this type has never been held in the U.S., though it occurs annually in Europe, bringing practitioners (and newcomers) together from a variety of fields to exchange information about, and experiences with, EBSD. The first day of our conference will be an all-day tutorial aimed at beginners (students and others) who wish to get up to speed with this technique. The next two days will consist of invited and contributed talks, with a goal being significant interaction among the participants. Poster sessions will be organized and highlighted during the session, allowing additional involvement, particularly by students and post-doctoral researchers. NSF funds will be used to subsidize student participation in the conference.
