X-ray powder diffraction of high-absorption materials at the XRD1 beamline off the best conditions: Application to (Gd,Nd)5Si4 compounds

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that the XRD1 beamline can effectively perform X-ray diffraction on high-absorption materials like (Gd,Nd)5Si4 compounds by using a specific sample mounting technique, providing reliable structural and magnetic data.

Contribution

It introduces a method for analyzing high-absorption materials at the XRD1 beamline under suboptimal conditions, expanding its applicability.

Findings

X-ray diffraction results correlate magnetic transition temperatures with interatomic distances.

The technique yields consistent and high-quality diffraction data for high-absorption samples.

Magnetometry confirms the relationship between structure and magnetic properties.

Abstract

Representative compounds of the new family of magnetic materials Gd5-xNdxSi4 were analyzed by X-ray diffraction at the XRD1 beamline at LNLS. To reduce X-ray absorption, thin layers of the powder samples were mounted outside the capillaries and measured in Debye-Scherrer geometry as usual. The X-ray diffraction analyses and the magnetometry results indicate that the behavior of the magnetic transition temperature as a function of Nd content may be directly related to the average of the four smallest interatomic distances between different rare earth sites of the majority phase of each compound. The quality and consistency of the results show that the XRD1 beamline is able to perform satisfactory X-ray diffraction experiments on high-absorption materials even off the best conditions.