Multilayers, heterostructures, nanostructures and composites are of great interest to the materials scientists, and frequently we encounter crystals lacking centrosymmetry. Thus crystal polarity determination on a microscopic scale is becoming increasingly important in describing interface structures and the internal defects in small crystals. in many cases the polarity of a crystallite can be determined by convergent beam electron diffraction, CBED. Powerful alternatives are to monitor the electron induced x-ray emission, EDS, or electron energy losses, EELS, under channeling conditions. While the determination of the phase of the structure factors, and thus the determination of the crystal polarity, relies on many beam diffraction effects when the CBED technique is used, two-beam experiments provide information about the phase of the structure factor when localized EDS or EELS signals are detected under channeling conditions.

The experimental conditions used to determine the polarity and absolute orientation from electron channeling are similar to those used in ALCHEMI experiments to locate small amounts of atoms by electron channeling.