Grain extraction and microstructural analysis method for two-dimensional poly and quasicrystalline solids

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile variational method for analyzing the microstructure of two-dimensional crystalline and quasicrystalline solids, enabling accurate grain extraction and characterization across various defected systems.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, generalizable variational approach for microstructural analysis of 2D polycrystalline and quasicrystalline materials, validated on large-scale defected systems.

Findings

Microstructural properties exhibit universal features regardless of symmetry.

The method accurately quantifies grain size and misorientation distributions.

The approach is effective for both periodic and quasicrystalline structures.

Abstract

While the microscopic structure of defected solid crystalline materials has significant impact on their physical properties, efficient and accurate determination of a given polycrystalline microstructure remains a challenge. In this paper we present a highly generalizable and reliable variational method to achieve this goal for two-dimensional crystalline and quasicrystalline materials. The method is benchmarked and optimized successfully using a variety of large-scale systems of defected solids, including periodic structures and quasicrystalline symmetries to quantify their microstructural characteristics, e.g., grain size and lattice misorientation distributions. We find that many microstructural properties show universal features independent of the underlying symmetries.