Analysis of diffuse scattering in neutron powder diagrams. Application to glassy carbon

From the quantitative analysis of the diffuse scattered intensity in powder diagrams valuable information about the disorder in crystals may be obtained. According to the dimensionality of this disorder (0D, 1D, 2D or 3D corresponding to diffuse peaks, streaks, planes or volume in reciprocal space) a characteristic modulation of the background is observed, which is described by specific functions. These are derived by averaging the appropriate cross sections over all crystallite orientations in the powder and folding with the resolution function of the instrument. If proper account is taken of all proportionality factors different components of the background can be put on one relative scale. The results are applied to two samples of glassy carbon differing in their degree of disorder. The neutron powder patterns contain contributions from 0D (00l peaks due to the stacking of graphitic layers), 1D (hkζ(streaks caused by the random orientation of these layers) and 3D (incoherent scattering, averaged thermal diffuse scattering, multiple scattering). From the fit to the observed data various parameters of the disorder like domain sizes, strains, interlayer distances, amount of incorporated hydrogen, pore sizes etc. are determined. It is shown that the omission of resolution corrections leads to false parameters.