HREM of general and twist grain boundaries.

The observation of atomic-scale structures of grain boundaries (GBs) via axial illumination HREM has been largely restricted to tilt GBs, due to the requirement that the electron beam be parallel to a low-index zone axis on both sides of the interface. This condition can be fulfilled for all tilt GBs with disorientation about a low-index direction. The information obtained through HREM studies in many materials has brought important insights concerning the atomic-scale structure of such boundaries. However, it is well known that tilt GBs occupy only an infinitesimally small fraction of the 5-dimensional phase space which describes the macroscopic geometry of all GBs. Therefore, although tilt GBs are very important due to their low energy, it would be useful to also study twist GBs and general GBs that contain twist and tilt components.