To obtain crystalline thin films of alpha-Quartz represents a challenge due to the tendency for the material towards spherulitic growth. Thus, understanding the mechanisms that give rise to spherulitic growth can help regulate the growth process. Here the spherulitic type of 2D crystal growth in thin amorphous Quartz films was analyzed by electron back-scatter diffraction (EBSD). EBSD was used to measure the size, orientation, and rotation of crystallographic grains in polycrystalline SiO2 and GeO2 thin films with high spatial resolution. Individual spherulitic Quartz crystal colonies contain primary and secondary single crystal fibers, which grow radially from the colony center towards its edge, and fill a near circular crystalline area completely. During their growth, individual fibers form so-called rotational crystals, when some lattice planes are continuously bent. The directions of the lattice rotation axes in the fibers were determined by an enhanced analysis of EBSD data. A possible mechanism, including the generation of the particular type of dislocation(s), is suggested.

OIM DataCollection by EDAX, v7.3

OIM Analysis by EDAX, v.8.1

MATLAB by MathWorks, R2020b

MTEX extension for MATLAB, v5.5.0

Origin by OriginLab Co., v7.5

Gwyddion, v2.58

Data repository contains EBSD and AFM experimental data and their analysis presented in the paper: N.R. Lutjes et.al: Spherulitic and rotational crystal growth of Quartz thin films, Scientific Reports, (2021))

Directories in data repository are structured according Figures in publication.

Software packages used to generate and analyze research data:

OIM DC v7.3 Orientation Imaging Microscopy data collection by EDAX Inc. OIM Analysis v8.1 Orientation Imaging Microscopy data analysis by EDAX Inc. MATLAB R2020b Programming and numeric platform to analyze data by MathWorks MTEX v5.5.0 A free Matlab toolbox for analyzing EBSD data: https://mtex-toolbox.github.io/ Gwyddion v2.58 A free SPM data visualization and analysis tool: http://gwyddion.net Origin v7.5 Data analysis and graphing software by OriginLab Co.

Files types in repository:

readme_first.txt Text description of files present in each directory .txt ASCII data file .osc EBSD data collected by OIM DC v.7.3 .oim EBSD data project file created by OIM Analysis v8.1 .ang EBSD data file (ASCII) exported from OIM Analysis v8.1 .opj Origin 7.5 project .m Text file with Matlab code written for MTEX extension