Tessitura: Teoria ed Applicazioni all'analisi Rietveld

With the term crystallographic texture we refer to a non-random orientation distribution of polycrystalline grains inside a sample. It is referred to also as preferred orientation and when present it will cause reflection intensities to deviate from their theoretical random value. If the effect is not correctly taken into account or eliminated it will compromise most of the analyses done by diffraction that involve intensities: notably quantitative and structural analyses. Strong textures have even bigger impact affecting also phase identification, indexing, residual stress analyses etc. Texture should not be confused with graininess; the latter being a statistical problem to be solved by the experiment setup. With a suitable experiment and analysis it is possible to take advantage of the texture for structural analyses where powder methods fail.