A method for accurate texture determination of thin oxide films by glancing-angle laboratory X-ray diffraction

Abstract

The present article describes a modification to the standard method of glancing-angle X-ray diffraction for accurate measurement of the texture of thin oxide films. The technique resolves the problems caused by overlapping diffraction peaks originating from multiphase materials with asymmetric unit cells and the peak broadening associated with sample tilt during glancing-angle texture measurement. The entire 2θ range of interest is recorded as a function of sample orientation, and the integrated intensities from different crystallographic planes are extracted from fitted diffraction profiles. The technique allows for pole figures to be plotted from diffraction peaks that could otherwise not be resolved and separates contributions from neighbouring peaks, leading to a more accurate representation of the existing oxide texture. The proposed method has been used for determining texture in a 3 µm layer of monoclinic/tetragonal zirconium oxide grown during aqueous corrosion testing and has been verified by additional synchrotron X-ray diffraction measurements.