A method of increasing the detected intensity in X-ray powder diffractometers

It is known that errors are introduced in an X-ray powder diffractometer experiment due to instrument parameters such as the divergence of the incident X-ray beam, the width of the detector slit and the spacing of the Soller slits. A method to correct for these errors is developed. This allows the use of larger slit widths and incident divergence, leading to increased detected intensities. The method will be of use in powder line profile analysis and particularly in the study of liquids and amorphous solids. The errors introduced in the measured intensity are corrected by expanding the scattered intensity as a power series in the scattering angle. The theory for the simple case of a one-dimensional spectrum, scanned by a one-dimensional slit, is developed. In this case, to the second order, the required correction to the measured intensity, is proportional to its second Taylor coefficient. The efficiency of the correction technique is studied through computer studies on model intensity profiles. Some results on an experimental line profile are also presented. Finally, the correction formula for the case of the general powder diffractometer geometry is derived.