Abstract
EBSD technique has been applied to fine-grained kaolin minerals to determine the polytypes (kaolinite, dickite and nacrite) for individual grains and their crystal orientations in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Because kaolin minerals are prone to radiation damage by intense electron beam that is necessary to obtain EBSD patterns, the beam during pattern acquisition should be radiated on a certain specimen area with scanning mode. Kaolinite-dickite or nacrite are easily distinguished by trigonal or hexagonal symmetries around the [001]* direction respectively, of the Kikuchi bands corresponding to family reflections. Ordered dickite can be differentiated from kaolinite with a mirror plane passing the [001]* direction and characteristic Kikuchi poles.
