Effective elimination of the Compton component in amorphous scattering by experimental means

In the X-ray scattering from amorphous materials, the coherent-peak profile overlapped with part of the Compton distribution can be directly obtained at each (sin θ)/λ, with an energy-dispersive detector and multichannel pulse-height analyzer combination adapted to an X-ray diffractometer. For the `effective' elimination of the Compton component it is useful for one to pick out the half-profile, I_bh, on the higher-energy side of the peak maximum of the incident beam (in an energy scan at fixed scattering angle). On the assumption that the Compton scattering occurs within a range of energy lower than that of the incident radiation, the Compton contribution to I_bh is negligibly small compared to the strong coherent intensity and I_bh can be taken to represent the coherent intensity. As an illustration, the method is applied to the scattering from amorphous selenium. The resulting radial distribution function is in good agreement with the carefully examined result of using a crystal monochromator in the diffracted beam.