Direct determination of microstructural parameters from the X-ray diffraction profile of a crystal with stacking faults

Abstract

The practical aspects of a recently deduced formalism for the direct solution of the powder diffraction pattern of a layer crystal are addressed. It is shown that the obtained solution is particularly well suited to combination with a deconvolution procedure based on a series development of the peak profile. The influence of noise and step size on the obtained solution is discussed. Computer simulation is used to assess the robustness of the proposed procedure. The developed procedure is applied to a powder sample of Y 2 Co 17 that is affected by planar disorder.