Title "Diffuse Neutron Scattering from Crystalline Materials"
Authors Victoria M.Nield and David A.Keen
Publisher Oxford University Press 7 December 2000 UK price £65 hardback
Series Oxford Series on Neutron Scattering in Condensed Matter
ISBN 0-19-851790-4 336 pages 5 halftones, 80 line figures, 234mm x 156mm

The authors begin their preface with these sentences: "The existence of diffuse scattering in diffraction data has confounded and fascinated crystallographers for over eighty years. For some it is an inconvenience, increasing 'background' and obscuring weak Bragg peaks whereas others may harness it to reveal the subtle details of structures".

In the rest of the book they explain in detail the theory and experimental techniques to do this and give examples of applications in many materials. The book is aimed at research workers in crystallography and can probably be understood by graduate students with some mathematical training since the authors explain their terminology clearly in the Introduction and include a brief historical overview of the subject. Did you know that in the middle of the Second World War, in early 1941, many eminent crystallographers, including Kathleen Lonsdale, both Braggs and Max Born, attended a workshop on diffuse scattering held at the Royal Society in London? The front cover of the September 1990 issue of 'Crystallography News' carried an example of a surface plot representing the coherent diffuse elastic scattering from a single crystal of cubic zirconia. This was about the time that R.L.McGreevy and W.Hayes at Oxford University were doing pioneering work on computer modelling as an aid to data analysis with their D.Phil students, who are the authors of this book, which was started some 5 years ago. Although this is a book mainly concerned with neutron scattering there is a short section on the uses of X-rays and electrons in diffuse scattering. Topics such as magnetism and quasielastic neutron scattering are not covered since they are the subject of other recent books in this series.

Later chapters cover neutron scattering formalism, diffuse scattering theory and experimental techniques. Instruments are not usually designed with diffuse scattering experiments in mind, however, the authors suggest some possible compromises in design which would make diffuse scattering experiments easier. Existing instruments are described which are at the ISIS pulsed neutron source in the UK and at the Institute Laue Langevin reactor source in Grenoble and there is a paragraph on the types of sample environment needed. Further chapters cover data correction and computer simulation and modelling of the defect structures in the crystals. This has much in common with the simulation of liquids; the techniques covered are molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo simulations, Reverse Monte Carlo (RMC) simulations and the pair distribution function (PDF) analysis methods.

Later chapters cover applications of diffuse scattering theory to binary systems, examples of diffuse scattering experiments on alloys, other binary materials and on superionic conductors. Diffuse scattering can also be used to study the internal structure of molecules such as that of ice at very low temperatures; experiments are described which used the SXD instrument at ISIS over a range of temperatures from 10 to 250 °K. Large crystals were needed (of the order 10mm diameter by 10mm height) in order to measure the weak diffuse scattering with sufficient statistics in a limited time. Organic molecules and even proteins can also be studied. The final chapter concerns framework structures using the tetrahedral phases of silica as an example.

This book is the first comprehensive account of diffuse neutron scattering and should be available to anyone working on neutron scattering.

Kate Crennell, January 2001

Page last updated 14 December 2001

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