Crystals and X-Ray

Abstract

X-ray was discovered by the German Physicist Roentgen in 1895 almost accidentally while performing experiments on the discharge of electricity through gases under low pressure. Another German Physicist Von Laue’s discovery of regular diffraction pattern when X-ray was diffracted by single crystals opened a new year of crystal structure analysis. It is only after the Von Laue’s famous experiment; it was proved that the crystallinity of a solid depends on the regular arrangement of the constituent atoms or molecules in three-dimensional space and not on the external features. It should also be known that the wavelength of X-ray radiation varies between ∼1 and ∼3 Å, which is the order of interatomic distances of the solids and that is why X-ray satisfies the diffraction conditions. In addition to that of X-ray, there are two other methods of analysis of crystallinity of materials and they are electron and neutron diffraction. These three techniques have their own advantages and limitations and in essence complement one another.