An elementary treatment on the diffraction of crystalline structures

Abstract

Although W. L. Bragg's law can be easily derived for beginners in the field of crystallography, its interpretation however seems to cause some difficulties which lies essentially in the relation between the concept of lattice planes and the unit cell constants characterizing the lattice periodicity of the crystal structure. Our approach is certainly not new and is based on a more physical approach where every single point in the crystal participates in the diffraction process. From the early stages of developing a model of diffraction, we make abundant use the dual reference frames namely the direct and reciprocal reference frames. With this approach, W. L. Bragg's law can be reformulated directly in terms of the reciprocal unit cell constants avoiding thus the necessity to introduce a priori the notion of lattice planes. Following the derivation of the diffraction law, different steps and methods leading to the complete determination of a crystal structure are derived. We present also some simulation tools to explain in particular the crystal diffraction phenomenon based on the Ewald sphere and the solution of crystalline structures based on the dual space iteration techniques which are currently used.