This award will partially support a conference focused on Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) planned for June 19-21, 2012, at Carnegie Mellon University, under the sponsorship of the Microanalysis Society (MAS). EBSD is an important technique that utilizes the diffraction of high-energy electrons to determine the orientations of crystals in natural and synthetic materials. 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).
The previous two meetings of this type were held in the U.S. and occurred in May 2008 and May 2010 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Both were extremely successful, where participation grew from ~100 to ~130. It brought together 25-36 students, 65-90 professionals, and 7-12 vendors to exchange information and experiences involving the EBSD technique. We will repeat the format with some modifications for EBSD 2012. The first day is an all-day tutorial aimed at beginners (students and others) who wish to get up to speed with this technique. In the afternoon, there will be more advanced tutorials for more experienced users. Throughout the session, attendees will have the opportunity to see live EBSD demonstrations by all four major EBSD vendors on CMU instruments. The next two days will consist of invited and contributed talks spanning various material science and geosciences topics: materials processing, nuclear materials for energy, high temperature/tectonics, strain, 3D reconstructions and high performance ceramics. These talks and a planned poster session will allow significant participant interaction. Students will particularly benefit from these interactions while also having the opportunity to present their research via oral or poster presentations.
A conference focused on Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) took place June 19-21, 2012, at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), under the sponsorship of the Microanalysis Society (MAS). EBSD is an important technique that utilizes the diffraction of high-energy electrons to determine the orientations of crystals in natural and synthetic materials. This approach has major applications in both material science and geology related to everything from metallurgical deformation processes to geological histories embedded in mineral microstructures. The three-day conference consisted of a one-day tutorial and two days of technical symposia. The first day was an all-day tutorial on the EBSD technique covering the theory, practice, software considerations, sample preparation methods and real-world practical applications in both materials science and geology. Throughout the session, attendees had the opportunity to see live EBSD demonstrations on CMU electron microscopes in coordination with EBSD vendors and specialists. The next two days consisted of invited and contributed talks spanning various material science and geoscience topics: materials processing, nuclear materials for energy, high temperature/tectonics, strain, 3D reconstructions and high performance ceramics. These talks and a poster session allowed significant participant interaction. In particular, students benefited from these interactions while also having the opportunity to present their research via oral or poster presentations. This proposal requested $12,000 to support student travel costs to this conference. Intellectual merit: EBSD applications are developing so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up with innovations in one field, let alone in the multiple fields that utilize this approach. This conference provides a venue for ideas to be shared between the primary disciplines utilizing the technique: materials science and geoscience. The exchange of cutting-edge knowledge from the two communities facilitates research developments in both. Broader Impacts: Although software vendors provide training for EBSD users, sessions are expensive and rather limited (and usually happen before the user knows the right questions to ask). The tutorial that opens this topical conference provides not only basic training that will be particularly useful to students, but also access to a number of expert users from a variety of fields. In addition, the conference is designed to facilitate interaction between users who have no usual means of communication – notably materials scientists and geologists.
