The determination of angles and intensities produced by diffraction of X-ray radiation by mineral lattices provides information which is characteristic for their crystalline structures.

X-ray powder diffraction is used by us for identification, quantitative phase analysis and structure refinement of phases in synthesized powders. Most diffraction data is processed by the Rietveld method using the GSAS software package.

We use two STOE Stadi P diffractometer equiped with a curved Germanium (111) primary monochromator yielding a convergent primary beam of Kα1 radiation and a high resolution MYTHEN-detector. The typical sample size we use is around 1 mg.