There was an increasing amount of interest in grain boundary engineering to improve the properties of the grain boundary network. In general, research has concentrated on use of a grain boundary misorientation based approach, namely, the coincidence site lattice, to categorise 'special' boundaries. The present paper presents the case that the specialness of grain boundaries was based on having at least one low index plane at the boundary, rather than because the boundary was a coincidence site lattice type. It was shown that grain boundary planes play a pivotal role in grain boundary engineering, and hence, an approach which focuses on the plane was advocated.

Role of Grain Boundary Plane in Grain Boundary Engineering. V.Randle: Materials Science and Technology, 2010, 26[7], 774-80