A variety of materials containing many different microstructures have been examined with the USS MVEM. Three topics have been selected to illustrate some of the more recent studies of diffraction phenomena and defect, grain and multi-phase structures of metals and minerals.(1) Critical Voltage Effects in Metals and Alloys - This many-beam dynamical diffraction phenomenon, in which some Bragg resonances vanish at certain accelerating voltages, Vc, depends sensitively on the spacing of diffracting planes, Debye temperature θD and structure factors. Vc values can be measured to ± 0.5% in the HVEM ana used to obtain improved extinction distances and θD values appropriate to electron diffraction, as well as to probe local bonding effects and composition variations in alloys.
