Abstract

Non-destructive methods to determine the volume fraction of minor texture components with very low reflection intensities are presented. The methods are based on polycrystalline diffraction of hard X-rays from synchrotron sources. By focusing the X-rays and scanning the specimen, it is shown that volume fractions as low as 10^-9 can be registered, provided that the crystallographic orientations of such volume elements are far away from any major texture component. Simultaneously, the spatial resolving power is of the order 0.03 μm³. The relevance of such methods for nucleation studies and trace analysis is outlined.