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“Ab-Initio” Structure Solution of Nano-Crystalline Minerals and Synthetic Materials by Automated Electron Tomography

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Minerals as Advanced Materials II

Abstract

Most of the newly discovered mineral phases, as well as many new synthesized industrial materials, appear only in the form of nano crystals, with a size not sufficient for single-crystal x-ray structure analysis. The development of techniques able to investigate the structure of nano crystalline materials is therefore one of the most important frontiers of crystallography. The most widespread technique providing relatively fast and well consolidated routes for structure analysis of bulk materials is x-ray powder diffraction (XRPD). Nevertheless, XRPD suffers from intrinsic 1-dimension reduction of information that greatly limits its applicability in presence of peak broadening and overlapping. Peak broadening is usually caused by very small crystallites, namely less than 50nm. Overlapping of peaks is problematic mainly for intensity integration, but in case of polyphasic mixtures or significant amount of impurities it can be critical also for cell parameter determination and reflection indexing.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Iryna Andrusenko, Dominik Koll, Govanna Vezzalini and Rossella Arletti for providing the samples and for useful discussion. The work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the Sonderforschungsbereich 625. Financial support for the workshop “Minerals as Advanced Materials II” came from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DE 412/46-1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Physikalische Chemie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Welderweg 11, Mainz, 55128, Germany

    Enrico Mugnaioli, Tatiana E. Gorelik, Andrew Stewart & Ute Kolb

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  1. Enrico Mugnaioli
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  2. Tatiana E. Gorelik
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  3. Andrew Stewart
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  4. Ute Kolb
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Correspondence to Enrico Mugnaioli .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Crystallography, Saint Petersburg State University, University Embankment 7/9, St.Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation

    Sergey V. Krivovichev

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Mugnaioli, E., Gorelik, T.E., Stewart, A., Kolb, U. (2011). “Ab-Initio” Structure Solution of Nano-Crystalline Minerals and Synthetic Materials by Automated Electron Tomography. In: Krivovichev, S. (eds) Minerals as Advanced Materials II. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20018-2_5

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