Determination of grain boundary geometry using TEM

An experimental method to obtain the grain boundary geometry using the transmission electron microscope is presented. The method allows Σ determination including grain boundary plane orientation. In order to determine the specialness of the grain boundary, three different criteria for maximum allowable deviations from exact CSL misorientations were examined. We tested these three criteria from a statistical distribution of grain boundary types in terms of Σ. We compared grain boundary distributions from other studies in Ni₃Al and found discrepancies among them. It seems that the discrepancy came from the different criteria for special boundaries in Σ determination and different experimental procedures they used. The statistical distribution of grain boundary plane orientations showed that low Σ boundaries (Σ < 11) were oriented to the plane of high density of coincident sites.