A MONTE-CARLO STUDY OF THE POSITION OF PHASE BOUNDARIES IN BACKSCATTERED ELECTRON IMAGES

A Monte Carlo simulation of the contrast variation across phase bounda ries in backscattered electron images of multiple phase composition sy stems has been used to develop a model for prediction of the position of the interface based solely on a knowledge of the signal intensity l evels on either side of the interface. A wide range of average atomic numbers of the phases on either side of the boundary have been investi gated at incident beam energies of 5, 10, 15, and 25 kV and a least-sq uares minimisation procedure used to optimise the parameters of a gene ralised model.