High-resolution X-ray powder diffraction (HR-XRPD)

X-ray powder diffraction is ideal for identification, refinement, and solution of microcrystalline structures. This technique provides a rapid diagnostic for detecting impurities, quantifying phases, determining molecular-scale and morphological properties of matter, and much more.

Key advantages:

• Focuses on long-range, periodic atomic arrangements
• Provides crystal structure information
• Excellent for phase identification and quantification
• Can determine crystallite size and strain
• Best suited for crystalline materials with long-range order

Target information:

• Structural state: Discern crystalline, nanocrystalline, versus amorphous states of matter
• Crystal structure: Identify or determine the unit cell, space group symmetry, and atomic positions
• Crystallite size: The average or distribution of crystalline domain sizes in the sample
• Crystallite morphology: Highly sensitive to crystalline domain shapes for nanomaterials or highly anisotropic crystallites
• Microstructural properties: Macro- and microstrain, stacking defects, domain size, etc.
• Crystal structure defects: Doping of heavy atoms, antisite defects, etc.
• Phase identification: Search-match procedures to identify primary phases and impurities
• Phase quantification: Quantification of weight fractions of mixed phases.
• Rietveld refinement: Refinement of crystal structures to the diffraction pattern to obtain accurate structural parameters.
• Whole powder pattern modeling: Modeling method for accurately simulating all scattering contributions, including thermal diffuse scattering, and effects from complex crystallite shapes and size distributions.