Pathways for Quantitative Analysis by X-Ray Diffraction

Quantitative analysis by powder X-Ray diffraction (Q-PXRD) is hardly ever carried out by simple or obvious methods. Although the theory has been well established for some time (Clark, 1936; Alexander et al., 1948; Chung, 1974, 1975; Brindley, 1980; Bish et al., 1988; etc.), in practice imprecise results are obtained because of experimental oversimplification usually introduced as a result of the complexity of the problem. Most of the usual methods are based on the correspondence between the intensities diffracted by each crystalline phase and their weight content in a multiple component mixture, without previously assuming that this correspondence is linear.