Use of Neutron Diffraction for Describing Texture of Isostatically-Pressed Molybdite Powders

Abstract

The modelling and/or describing of texture (i.e. preferred crystallographic orientation (PO)) is of critical importance in powder diffraction analysis - for structural study and phase composition. In the present study, the GSAS Rietveld refinement with generalized spherical harmonic (GSH) was used for describing isostatically-pressed molybdite powders neutron powder diffraction data collected in the ILL D1A instrument. The results showed that for texture in a single ND data of molybdite the reasonable crystal structure parameters may be obtained when applying corrections to intensities using the GSH description. Furthermore, the WIMV method was used to extract the texture description directly from a simultaneous refinement with 1368 whole neutron diffraction patterns taken from the sample held in a variety of orientations in the ILL D1B texture goniometer. The results provided a quantitative description of the texture refined simultaneously with the crystal structure. Finally, the (002) molybdite pole-figures were measured using the GKSS TEX2 texture goniometer. The results showed that neutron diffraction is an excellent tool to investigate the texture in molybdite.