X-Ray Diffraction Crystalline Microstructure of Minerals

Dear Colleagues,

Most minerals and materials are mainly made of polycrystals. Powder X-ray diffraction analysis of their ideal crystals concerns mainly identification, quantification and structure refinements, while that of non-ideal crystals concerns the real microstructure (crystallite size, shape, strain), texture, stress and distortions. A variety of methods have been developed to analyze the microstucture by X-ray powder diffraction in order to characterize defects, composition variations and crystallite size, shape and microstrains. The X-ray line (or peak) profile analysis (LPA) used for the study of crystalline microstructures started with the investigation of the crystallite size of colloidal particles of noble metals by Scherrer in 1918. In a simplified way, it has been established that the broadening of the diffraction peaks results from two main contributions that are crystallite (the domain which can be considered as a perfect crystal) size and lattice microstrains. Line profile parameters give information about the size and shape of crystallites together with the distribution of sizes and microstrains, the nature of dislocations and the occurrence of faults or mistakes in the structure. There are different procedures to extract contributions, and the most widely used results are those concerning average crystallite sizes and crystallite size distributions, which in anisotropic crystals refer to particular diffraction directions. Observation with microscopy techniques of high resolution and magnification (HRTEM, FESEM, AFM, etc.) allows the recognition of correspondences or correlations between measured values, or possible aggregation mechanisms. Different size distributions frequently reveal different growth mechanisms. The appreciated microstructural characteristics can be applied to the discrimination of genetic processes, both in the natural and industrial production of crystalline solids. Microstructural parameters are frequenly used in the evaluation of mineral processing and in the production of materials, as well as in the characterization of geological units.

Prof. Dr. Joaquín Bastida
Dr. Pablo Rafael Pardo Ibáñez
Guest Editors

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