Bragg-von Laue diffraction generalized to twisted X-rays
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Richard D. James; Gero Friesecke; Dominik Jüstel
- Source
- Acta crystallographica. Section A, Foundations and advances. 72(Pt 2)
- Subject
- Plane wave
Structure (category theory)
02 engineering and technology
Carbon nanotube
Symmetry group
Translation (geometry)
01 natural sciences
Biochemistry
Atomic units
law.invention
Inorganic Chemistry
Optics
Structural Biology
law
Group (periodic table)
0103 physical sciences
General Materials Science
Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
010306 general physics
Physics
business.industry
021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology
Condensed Matter Physics
Computational physics
X-ray crystallography
0210 nano-technology
business
- Language
- ISSN
- 2053-2733
A pervasive limitation of nearly all practical X-ray methods for the determination of the atomic scale structure of matter is the need to crystallize the molecule, compound or alloy in a sufficiently large (∼10 × 10 × 10 µm) periodic array. In this paper an X-ray method applicable to structure determination of some important noncrystalline structures is proposed. It is designed according to a strict mathematical analog of von Laue's method, but replacing the translation group by another symmetry group, and simultaneously replacing plane waves by different exact closed-form solutions of Maxwell's equations. Details are presented for helical structures like carbon nanotubes or filamentous viruses. In computer simulations the accuracy of the determination of structure is shown to be comparable to the periodic case.