Crystalline interfaces associated with lattice translations such as stacking-faults (SFs) and twin boundaries may be characterized in the transmission electron microscope (TEM) by oscillatory fringe contrast known as SF, or rigid-body-translation, fringes. Such fringe contrast is usually obtained using weak-beam bright-field (BF) or dark-field (DF) conditions with ideally only one reflection, g, excited. The nature of the SF contrast has been explained by dynamical theory of electron diffraction in terms of the Howie-Whelan equations [1]. The fringe contrast arises from an interference caused by a phase shift the diffracted electron beams, undergo upon propagating across the interface. The phase shift, α, is proportional to the projection of the translation vector, R, onto the diffraction vector, g (i.e. α # g.R). The direction of the translation state can be determined explicitly from the SF contrast in a manner analogous to the analysis of dislocation Burgers vector.

An analysis of SF fringes with respect to diffraction theory permits the magnitude of the lattice translation to be evaluated in experimental images.