SP2: a computer program for plotting stereographic projection and exploring crystallographic orientation relationships

Abstract

Stereographic projection is one of the most powerful research tools for crystallography in materials science. A new program for full operation of stereographic projections and in‐depth exploration of crystallographic orientation relationships is described. It is specifically designed for materials researchers who are in need of tools for extensive crystallographic analysis. The difference from other popular commercial software for crystallography is that this program provides new options for users to plot and fully control stereographic projections of an arbitrary pole centre for an arbitrary crystal structure and to illustrate composite stereographic projections, which are necessary to explore the orientation relationships between two phases. The program is able to perform a range of essential crystallographic calculations.

SPICA: stereographic projection for interactive crystallographic analysis

“…For a cubic crystal, the plane normal is parallel to the orientation with the same index as this plane, but it is necessary to transform between the plane index and the plane normal index for non-cubic crystals. A function for the transformation from a plane (hkl) to the plane normal [uvw] is provided in SPICA on the basis of the work by Liu & Liu (2012).…”

“…SP2 (Liu & Liu, 2012) is a recent computer program for stereographic projection. A comparison between SP2 and SPICA is given here.…”

“…7 shows two identical stereograms with (a) the index labels of the -Mg phase and (b) the index labels of the -Mg 17 Al 12 phase. The same example was used in the article on SP2 (Liu & Liu, 2012).…”

“…Fig. 10 shows the Kikuchi maps of a primitive cubic structure with the [111] zone axis in the center, (a) generated using the method described by Liu & Liu (2012) and (b) generated using the formula of Young & Lytton (1972) with a wavelength of 0.0251 Å (200 kV). The overlaid distribution of the [uvw] zone axes is shown in Fig.…”

“…JECP/SP (Li, 2004) was developed for generating stereographic projections applicable to specimen orientation adjustment in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) experiments. SP2 (Liu & Liu, 2012) was developed for standard operation of stereographic projections and can also be used to make composite stereograms, which are necessary to explore the orientation relationships between two crystalline phases.…”