Detailed investigations of the microstructure and polycrystalline epitaxy of CoNiCr/Cr bilayer films have been carried out using various techniques of transmission electron microscopy. The average grain size for both the Cr and CoNiCr layers was about 510 A˚ although there is a great difference in their morphology. Analysis of the discontinuous ring (arced) diffraction patterns of the layers showed that the Cr underlayer is strongly [001] textured and the CoNiCr layer is weakly [112¯0] textured. The angular distribution of the Cr underlayer [001] texture axis was determined to be 6.7° and the ratio of the number of [001] textured grains to that of the randomly oriented grains was estimated to be 3:7 using dark‐field imaging techniques. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.