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
- 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.