Using transmission Kikuchi diffraction to study intergranular stress corrosion cracking in type 316 stainless steels

•Transmission Kikuchi diffraction (TKD) has been successfully utilized for stress corrosion cracking characterization of type 316 stainless steels.•Significant microstructural and micromechanical features related to SCC have been analyzed: e.g. grain boundary misorientation, grain boundary migration and plastic deformation around crack tip.•Resolution significantly higher than conventional EBSD due to smaller interaction volume.•Traditional EBSD hard- and software can be used for this technique with slight changes in the setup.•Other advantages: omission of dynamical focus, avoidance of time-consuming diffraction techniques in order to gain crystallographic information about the sample. Transmission Kikuchi diffraction (TKD), also known as transmission-electron backscatter diffraction (t-EBSD) is a novel method for orientation mapping of electron transparent transmission electron microscopy specimen in the scanning electron microscope and has been utilized for stress corrosion cracking characterization of type 316 stainless steels. The main advantage of TKD is a significantly higher spatial resolution compared to the conventional EBSD due to the smaller interaction volume of the incident beam with the specimen. Two 316 stainless steel specimen, tested for stress corrosion cracking in hydrogenated and oxygenated pressurized water reactor chemistry, were characterized via TKD. The results include inverse pole figure (IPFZ) maps, image quality maps and misorientation maps, all acquired in very short time (