X-ray diffraction articles within Nature Materials

Featured

• Article | 21 January 2021

  Revisiting metal fluorides as lithium-ion battery cathodes

  Metal-fluoride-based lithium-ion battery cathodes are typically classified as conversion materials because reconstructive phase transitions are presumed to occur upon lithiation. Metal fluoride lithiation is now shown to be dominated instead by diffusion-controlled displacement mechanisms.

  • Xiao Hua
  • , Alexander S. Eggeman
  •  & Clare P. Grey

• News & Views | 12 February 2018

  Illuminating interlayer interactions

  A synchrotron X-ray diffraction experiment demonstrates an unexpected accumulation of electron density in the interlayer region of TiS₂, and provides a benchmark for theoretical models of weak interlayer bonding.

  • Xiaohui Qiu
  •  & Wei Ji

• Article | 13 June 2016

  Crystal symmetry breaking and vacancies in colloidal lead chalcogenide quantum dots

  X-ray scattering and density functional theory calculations reveal that ligand-induced tensile stress can distort the rock-salt structure of small PbS and PbSe colloidal quantum dots, creating a Pb-deficient core surrounded by a Pb-enriched shell.

  • Federica Bertolotti
  • , Dmitry N. Dirin
  •  & Norberto Masciocchi

• Editorial | 23 July 2014

  Crystallography matters

  Celebrating a field of remarkable depth and importance.

• Commentary | 23 July 2014

  The hidden structure of liquids

  From its earliest days, crystallography has been viewed as a means to probe order in matter. J. D. Bernal's work on the structure of water reframed it as a means of examining the extent to which matter can be regarded as orderly.

  • Philip Ball

• Commentary | 23 July 2014

  Crystallography with powders

  Over the course of its long history, powder diffraction has provided countless insights into the properties of materials. It will continue to do so in the future, but with an emphasis on elucidating how materials respond to external stimuli.

  • Anthony K. Cheetham
  •  & Andrew L. Goodwin

• News & Views | 24 October 2011

  A coherent look at stress

  Molecular ligands are widely used to functionalize gold nanoparticles, but their influence on the particle structure has been difficult to probe. Coherent X-ray diffraction has now reached sufficient sensitivity to resolve adsorption-induced near-surface stress in a single nanocrystal.

  • Frank Schreiber