Diffraction from nanocrystalline materials

Over the past two decades, advantages of SR in XRPD have been widely exploited in many applications, ranging from basic scientific research to technology. Probably less known is the potentiality of SR-XRPD in studying nanostructured and highly defected materials, which usually present large deviations from the reference “perfect crystal” model. This requires specific methods to correctly analyze the XRPD data and, at the same time, provides an opportunity to investigate lattice defects and nanoscale materials. The present chapter first addresses features and main advantages of SR-XRPD in diffraction Line Profile Analysis (LPA); then, a brief theoretical overview is presented on the two main approaches based, respectively, on reciprocal space (Laue) and direct space (Debye) methods.