Powder Diffraction Proceedings Of The Ii International School On Powder Diffraction January 20 23 2002 Iacs Kolkata India As Part Of 125 Years Of Celebration

X-ray powder diffraction is a long-established and invaluable technique which is widely applied to the characterization of crystalline materials. The method has traditionally been used for phase identification, quantitative analysis and for the determination of structural imperfections. In recent years however, its use has been extended into exciting new areas such as the extraction of three-dimensional microstructural properties. This book contains 88 papers which deal with new findings, and insights into the subject. The contents are discussed under the headings of METHOD DEVELOPMENT: Determination of Crystal Structure and Lattice Constants, Qualitative and Quantitative Phase Analysis, Analysis of Microstructure and Macrostress, Texture and Coarse Grains; INSTRUMENTAL DEVELOPMENT AND MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES; NEUTRON POWDER DIFFRACTION; MATERIALS: Thin Layers, Polymers and Amorphous Materials, Metals and Alloys, Minerals and Inorganics, Organic Materials. Altogether, this timely collection of papers provides an essential outline of the newest developments in the field of Powder Diffraction.

Powder diffraction is one of the primary techniques used to characterize materials, providing structural information even when the crystallite size is too small for single crystal x-ray diffraction methods. There has been a significant increase in the application of powder diffraction in recent years, both in research and manufacturing, fuelled by improved instrumentation, data processing and awareness of the information that can be obtained. Powder diffraction allows for rapid, non-destructive analysis of multi-component mixtures without the need for extensive sample preparation. This gives laboratories the ability to quickly analyse unknown materials and perform materials characterization in such fields as chemistry, materials science, geology, mineralogy, forensics, archaeology, and the biological and pharmaceutical sciences. This book provides a concise introduction to modern powder diffraction methods with particular emphasis on practical aspects. It covers the background theory of diffraction in a form approachable by those with an undergraduate degree. Whilst individual chapters are written as stand alone sections, the text is sufficiently focused so that it can be read in its entirety by the non-specialist who wants to gain a rapid overview of what they can do with modern powder diffraction methods.

Volume 20 of Reviews in Mineralogy attempted to: (1) provide examples illustrating the state-of-the-art in powder diffraction, with emphasis on applications to geological materials; (2) describe how to obtain high-quality powder diffraction data; and (3) show how to extract maximum information from available data. In particular, the nonambient experiments are examples of some of the new and exciting areas of study using powder diffraction, and the interested reader is directed to the rapidly growing number of published papers on these subjects. Powder diffraction has evolved to a point where considerable information can be obtained from ug-sized samples, where detection limits are in the hundreds of ppm range, and where useful data can be obtained in milliseconds to microseconds. We hope that the information in this volume will increase the reader's access to the considerable amount of information contained in typical diffraction data.