Chapter Annealing

Abstract

Abstract. In material science, crystallographic texture is an important microstructural parameter which directly determines the anisotropy degree of most physical properties of a polycrystalline material at the macro scale. Its characterization is thus of fundamental and applied importance, and should ideally be performed prior to any physical property measurement or modeling. Neutron diffraction is a tool of choice for characterizing crystallographic textures: its main advantages over other existing techniques, and especially over the X-ray diffraction techniques, are due to the low neutron absorption by most elements. The obtained information is representative of a large number of grains, leading to a better accuracy of the statistical description of texture.