Texture (crystalline)
In materials science, texture is the distribution of crystallographic orientations of a polycrystalline sample. A sample in which these orientations are fully random is said to have no texture. If the crystallographic orientations are not random, but have some preferred orientation, then the sample has a weak, moderate or strong texture. The degree is dependent on the percentage of crystals having the preferred orientation. Texture is seen in almost all engineered materials, and can have a great influence on material properties. Also, geologic rocks show texture due to their thermo-mechanic history of formation processes.
One extreme case is a complete lack of texture: a solid with perfectly random crystallite orientation will have isotropic properties at length scales sufficiently larger than the size of the crystallites. The opposite extreme is a perfect single crystal, which has anisotropic properties by geometric necessity.
Read more about Texture (crystalline): Characterization and Representation, Common Textures, Orientation Distribution Function, Origins, Texture and Materials Properties, Thin Film Textures
Famous quotes containing the word texture:
“The laying of fish on the embers,
the taste of the fish,
the feel of the texture of bread,
the round and the half-loaf,
the grain of a petal,
the rain-bow and the rain.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)