Method for Identifying Crystalline Phases in X-ray Diffraction Data from Multiphase Samples

TL;DR

This paper introduces a statistical method for identifying multiple crystalline phases in complex X-ray diffraction data, especially effective for low-content phases in multiphase materials.

Contribution

It presents a novel non-quantitative criterion for phase detection in X-ray diffraction data of multiphase samples with many phases and low phase content.

Findings

Method reliably detects phases with many diffraction reflexes.

Effective for phases with less than 3 wt%.

Works with data where reflexes are above noise level.

Abstract

A new method for identifying crystalline phases in X-ray diffraction data has been proposed, which is especially useful for the study of multiphase materials (more than eight - ten phases) with a relatively low content (less than 1 - 3 wt\%). The method is based on a statistical analysis of data and provides an unambiguous non-quantitative criterion for the presence of one or another phase in the material. It has been shown that the method works reliably in cases where a significant number of reflexes (more than several dozen) on the diffraction pattern are comparable with intensity-to-noise ratio.