Texture – An Overview

Abstract

Samples that are polycrystalline solids produced by some mechanical process frequently possess a non-random orientation of the crystallites due to deformation of the material during the forming operation. The resulting crystallite orientations (“texture”) can be more complex that those obtained from simple packing of powders. In the course of crystal structure analysis from powder diffraction data, changes in the Bragg intensities resulting from texture / preferred orientation can strongly degrade the quality of a Rietveld refinement or prevent a structure solution. Here, we consider models for describing texture in polycrystalline samples and examine their application to real world examples.