EBSD Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) is a technique used on a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to determine the phases and orientations of the crystals within a material. Individual measurements can me made by positioning the electron beam at particuar locations on a sample. Alternatively, data can be accquired from a large area of the sample by automated beam or stage movement and data collection from a large number of points on a grid to produce an EBSD map (such as a phase map, below). An EBSD map can then be processed to produce a wide variety of information, such as grain size, phase area fraction, crystallographic texture, boundary character, misorientation and strain. The variation of these attributes in a small region or over a large area of the sample can be obtained.