Is it possible to measure the plastic deformation for the ceramic materials using the XRD diffraction technique? I know that brittle material, but some ceramic have little ductility.
the deformation obtained from the broadness of the peaks , using reitveld analysis is of nano order while ceramic have in general particle size in micron range, so the obtained results from XRD might be ineffective.
On the macro scale you can measure residual stresses in a ceramic material using XRD if your equipment is set up for this (possibility to tilt the sample). You could detect a plastic deformation as a relaxation of the residual stresses. In the level of individual grains you can also measure stresses and relaxation of stresses but then you need to use electron diffraction (EBSD in an SEM). You can easily induce a plastic deformation in a ceramic by a hardness indent. A small indent gives only plastic deformation while a larger indent will also cause cracking (brittle failure).
Theoretically yes because the plastic deformation is going to induce changes in the dimensions of the crystal lattice, By XRD you can measure these changes and accordingly you can assess the extent of strain. Nevertheless, how to chose the testing specimen and how to expose the plastically deformed part and how to scan it is another issue.
There are standard XRD line broadening analysis to estimate grain size and microsstrain resulted from dislocations. You may try. If the plastic deformation is too small, the measured microstrain would be very low, so it is hard to quantify density fo dislocations produced by the plastic deformation.