Polychromatic Microdiffraction Studies Of Inhomogeneous Deformation

Polychromatic microdiffraction is an emerging non-destructive probe of local crystal structure that provides submicron-resolved three-dimensional (3-D) maps of the local phase, crystalline orientation, and the local elastic-stress and dislocation tensors. The unique ability to characterize these critical material properties before, during, and after deformation, provides new insights and guidance for theories that attempt to include realistic local properties to model materials evolution and inhomogeneous deformation. The recent installation of dedicated polychromatic microdiffraction beamlines on powerful synchrotron sources has enabled demonstration measurements. Early experiments illustrate the promise of polychromatic microdiffraction to bridge the experimental gap between atomistic and continuum scales. New instrumentation will improve spatial resolution and accelerate data collection by two to four orders of magnitude. This will allow the technique to become routinely three-dimensional and will greatly improve insights into the roles that local structures and defect distributions play in inhomogeneous deformation.