From my understanding, XRD is used to determine phase identification of a crystalline material. Is it possible to use XRD to determine the composition of a certain material? I think XRF or EDS is the elemental analysis tool for composition determination, right?
XRD can give you information on the crystalline component of you material. This means you can not get information about amorphous components. You can use XRD to identify the phase (and composition if you have an idea of what might be inside your material) of the crystalline part but can't give you any idea of the relative abundance of those components since the intensity of the signals depends on the crystallinity of each of them, so they cannot be compared.
If you are interested in the composition EDS can be used to have an idea of the major components, giving you a spatial idea of you composition (like combining it with SEM).
ICP-MS or ICP-EOS might be also good techniques to characterize the composition of a material.
Dear Dr. Yong Zhao,
you are right ; if you are needing elemental analysis then you will need to use XRF or EDS analysis. XRD can give you information on the crystalline components present in your material but it cannot tell you the elemental composition. XRF and EDS analysis meanwhile can give you the elemental composition, but do not tell you how those elements are combined with one another.
Best regards, Pierluigi Traverso
About quantitative analysis of a sample by X-ray diffraction (XRD) using the internal standard method, you may want to check answers given at a related discussion: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Could_anyone_explain_how_the_amorphous_content_of_a_material_is_analyzed_using_the_internal_standard_method_by_XRD
XRD can give you information on the crystalline component of you material. This means you can not get information about amorphous components. You can use XRD to identify the phase (and composition if you have an idea of what might be inside your material) of the crystalline part but can't give you any idea of the relative abundance of those components since the intensity of the signals depends on the crystallinity of each of them, so they cannot be compared.
If you are interested in the composition EDS can be used to have an idea of the major components, giving you a spatial idea of you composition (like combining it with SEM).
ICP-MS or ICP-EOS might be also good techniques to characterize the composition of a material.
XRD fixes crystalline compounds. When interpreted in "Syroquant", the result can be obtained in the form of elements or oxides (the program does this automatically, based on the formulas of the found minerals and crystalline compounds)
You can get the composition of your powder sample if you are synthesizing a reported compound after comparing a polycrystalline diffraction pattern with the simulated pattern which can be obtained by a single-crystal XRD. But in the case of exploratory synthesis one need to do EDS or other elemental composition methods suggested above. In addition, if your compound is new but if it crystallizes in any known structure type in that case also we can get the composition of the powder sample. For atoms, deficient compounds single-crystal XRD could give better idea about composition.
Dear Yong Zhao,
You can get the composition of your material with XRD but also you need perform C,H,N,S and ICP-OES , TGA-DTA .By analysing all the results and XRD patterns you can get the exact composition. EDS is also very helpful technique to get the composition.
Aravind Rudrarapu
Article How to use X-ray diffraction to elucidate 2D polymerization ...
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