The importance of thermal diffuse scattering in the comparison of X-ray and neutron diffraction data

A careful consideration of thermal diffuse scattering (TDS) is necessary in comparing X-ray and neutron diffraction data from crystals of the same material, because of the errors which it can cause in the integrated Bragg intensities. It is extremely unlikely that these errors will be the same in the two cases. The use of a three-crystal spectrometer for an `elastic' neutron diffraction measurement results in only a small reduction in the TDS contribution to the integrated intensity.