Electrons interact much more strongly than X-rays. That means you can do electron diffraction on much, much smaller volumes (nanoparticles), but you also get much less angular resolution. Plus, the energy of electrons is adjustable between some hundreds of eV (LEED) to the MeV range (high-voltage TEM) with much simpler setups than synchrotrons.

Electron diffraction is always in a vacuum. That adds complication in many cases.

Electrons interact much more strongly than X-rays. That means you can do electron diffraction on much, much smaller volumes (nanoparticles), but you also get much less angular resolution. Plus, the energy of electrons is adjustable between some hundreds of eV (LEED) to the MeV range (high-voltage TEM) with much simpler setups than synchrotrons.

Electron diffraction is always in a vacuum. That adds complication in many cases.

if you have a precession diffraction attachment and you want to to structure determination, then probably the question would be exactly the opposite :)

Except for this, the answer largely depends on your specimen and the type of information you are seeking. For instance organic/inorganic? do you look for structure or microstructure(defects)? Just remember that X-ray diffraction can be considered well within the kinematicalapproximation whereas with traditional electron diffraction you are in the dynamic regime (this is why for most people electron crystallography is a little nightmare!)

Electron crystallography can be used to widen the range of samples willing to structure analysis further than those which can be studied by single crystal X-ray diffraction. Furthermore, high resolution electron microscopy (HREM) images can provide some initial low resolution phases for X-ray diffraction which may help in phase determination in X-ray crystallography.

References:

1.http://www.elmi.uni-bonn.de/en/sub/forschung/kristallographie_e.html

2. Xiaodong Zou, "What is Electron Crystallography?", T.E. Weirich et al. (eds.), Electron Crystallography, 3–16

For single crystals, remember that the wavelengths of electrons are much smaller than those of X-rays. This means that the Ewald sphere for electron diffraction and intersects many more reciprocal lattice points. With electron diffraction, you can get a much larger diffraction pattern - containing much more information about the crystal structure - without having to tilt the crystal. Convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) can be used to further increase the amount of structural information gained.

Atomic structure factors for the two techniques differ, meaning that peaks with low intensities in one technique MAY be visible in the other.

Electron diffraction in a TEM is an extremely site-specific technique. It is possible to do site-specific X-ray work, but that generally involves a synchrotron or other high-intensity source.

Electron diffraction can be combined with other electron-based techniques, for example chemical analysis using EDS or EELS.

In the end, both have their advantages and disadvantages in different applications!

Ediff is a micro analytic technique, good for powder and micro singles crystals and use small amounts of sample.

XRD is much more accurate than EDif.

Volker, I am happy to finally see something valid on HAADF.. it's quite a fascinating technique.. unfortunately (and quite astonishingly) not very common in the nanomaterials community

I might just add that apart from nanoparticles electron diffraction (LEED, in particular) is useful for studying surface and near-surface region of single crystals and crystalline thin films. Consequently, el. diff. is a much used method in surface physics, which studies interactions of solids with environment. XRD is not used there - in XRD the surface region is an indistinguishable perturbation in the bulk signal.

Electron has much shorter wavelength connecting to DeBroglie relationship. This is good for it has strong scattering effect. However, there are aboundant electrons in a material hence the penetration of the electron wave can not be deep except with high energy electron. Low energy electron detect only the surface layer structure, which means its good for surface science study.

One shortage of this measurement is electron could deflected by earth magnetic or any other articficial M-field, especially at low energy diffraction case. Set up the instrument must be careful at the beginning.

Electrons have much more penetration (because of their higher energy) in the material than the X-rays. As a result the interaction in case of the electrons will be much prominent as compared to the X-rays.

Another thing scan rate is very important if peak is very small. Smaller scan rate is always preferable for better diffraction peaks. If the scan speed is very high, it may skip the smaller peaks without detecting.

@Volker:

Thank you for your valuable comment. I have to clarify my concept about this. Thank you so much.