Thermal expansion of deuterated monoclinic natrojarosite; a combined neutron–synchrotron powder diffraction study

A combination of time-of-flight neutron diffraction and synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction has been used to investigate the thermal expansion of a synthetic deuterated natrojarosite from 80 to 440 K under ambient-pressure conditions. The variation in unit-cell volume for monoclinic jarosite over this temperature range can be well represented by an Einstein expression of the form V = 515.308 (5) + 8.5 (4)/{exp[319 (4)/T] − 1}. Analysis of the behaviour of the polyhedra and hydrogen-bond network suggests that the strength of the hydrogen bonds connected to the sulfate tetrahedra is instrumental in determining the expansion of the structure, which manifests primarily in the c-axis direction.