Solving crystal structures from two-wavelength X-ray powder diffraction data - breaking the phase ambiguity in the noncentrosymmetric case

Direct methods of breaking phase ambiguities in protein crystallography have been introduced in powder diffraction analysis. This is aiming at ab initio solution of noncentrosymmetric structures using two-wavelength anomalous powder diffraction data. The known structure of the hydrogen bromide salt of leotidine (C₁₄H₂₀O₂N₂·HBr) in space group P2₁2₁2₁ was used for simulating two-wavelength anomalous powder diffraction with the Br atom as anomalous scatterer. X-ray wavelengths are selected at and  Å. Unique reflections from the diffraction pattern of were able to locate the Br atom accurately. All overlapping diffraction peaks were uniformly partitioned to decompose into single reflections. Structure-factor amplitudes were then extracted. With these and the substructure of Br atoms, unique phases for centric reflections (hk0, h0l and 0kl) and phase doublets for noncentric reflections were obtained. The direct method was used to break the phase ambiguity leading to an interpretable electron-density map, from which five cycles of Fourier iteration yielded the complete structure.