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A powder X-ray diffractometer in motion. X-ray crystallography is the experimental science of determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract in specific directions.
Crystallographic methods depend mainly on analysis of the diffraction patterns of a sample targeted by a beam of some type. X-rays are most commonly used; other beams used include electrons or neutrons. Crystallographers often explicitly state the type of beam used, as in the terms X-ray diffraction, neutron diffraction and electron diffraction ...
X-ray diffraction is a generic term for phenomena associated with changes in the direction of X-ray beams due to interactions with the electrons around atoms. It occurs due to elastic scattering, when there is no change in the energy of the waves. The resulting map of the directions of the X-rays far from the sample is called a diffraction pattern.
X-ray optics is the branch of optics dealing with X-rays, rather than visible light.It deals with focusing and other ways of manipulating the X-ray beams for research techniques such as X-ray diffraction, X-ray crystallography, X-ray fluorescence, small-angle X-ray scattering, X-ray microscopy, X-ray phase-contrast imaging, and X-ray astronomy.
Inelastically scattered X-rays have intermediate phases and so in principle are not useful for X-ray crystallography. In practice X-rays with small energy transfers are included with the diffraction spots due to elastic scattering, and X-rays with large energy transfers contribute to the background noise in the diffraction pattern.
The measurement of the angles can be used to determine crystal structure, see x-ray crystallography for more details. [5] [13] As a simple example, Bragg's law, as stated above, can be used to obtain the lattice spacing of a particular cubic system through the following relation:
Usually X-ray diffraction in spectrometers is achieved on crystals, but in Grating spectrometers, the X-rays emerging from a sample must pass a source-defining slit, then optical elements (mirrors and/or gratings) disperse them by diffraction according to their wavelength and, finally, a detector is placed at their focal points.
It is an X-ray-diffraction [2] method and commonly used to determine a range of information about crystalline materials. The term WAXS is commonly used in polymer sciences to differentiate it from SAXS but many scientists doing "WAXS" would describe the measurements as Bragg/X-ray/powder diffraction or crystallography.