Semiautomatic measurement of individual orientation of crystals by using etch pits and digitized images

An etch pit method has been developed to assess individual crystallographic orientations. This method includes a semiautomatic measurement of etch pits from digitized images obtained with a scanning electron microscope and of its (hkl)[uvw] orientation determination when the etched planes are the “001” ones. An interface board and software have been developed to store the images, and etch pit measurements and to perform the calculation of crystallographic orientations.