CBED Tools for semi-automatic measurement of crystal thicknesses

Convergent-beam electron diffraction (CBED) is one of the most popular techniques to measure crystal thickness. The traditional measurement involves linear fitting of several fringes across the CBED disc, but for a thin crystal with fewer than three fringes the usefulness of this method will be limited. CBED Tools, a free plugin for the DigitalMicrograph software, provides a fast (∼1-2-min) and accurate algorithm to measure the crystal thickness on the basis of the linear fitting method, but it is also capable of determining the crystal thickness when it is very thin and only one fringe or part of the first fringe is recorded. CBED Tools can also be utilized to handle the severely distorted CBED pattern obtained when the zero-order Laue zone Kikuchi lines overlap with the fringes.CBED Tools, a free plugin for the DigitalMicrograph software, is capable of fast and accurate measurements of crystal thickness and extinction distance based on the linear fitting method of convergent-beam electron diffraction (CBED) patterns. This tool is also able to perform thickness determination for very thin crystals when the traditional CBED thickness analysis does not work and to analyse the severely distorted fringes obtained when zero-order Laue zone Kikuchi lines strongly overlap with Kossel-Möllenstedt fringes.