Dear Leandro Bravo,
some comments below:

Leandro Bravo schrieb:


In the refinement of chlorite minerals with well defined disordering (layers shifting by exactly b/3 along the three pseudohexagonal Y axis), you separate the peaks into k = 3.n (relative sharp, less intensive peak) and k  3.n (broadened or disappeared reflections). How did you determined this value k = 3.n and n = 0,1,2,3..., right?

The occurence of stacking faults along the pseudohexagonal Y axes causes broadening of all reflections hkl with k unequal 3n (for example 110, 020, 111..) whereas the reflections with k equal 3n remain unaffected (001, 131, 060, 331...). This is clear from geometric conditions, and can be seen in single crystal XRD (oscillation photographs, Weissenberg photographs) as well in selected area electron diffraction patterns. The fact is known for a long time, and published and discussed in standard textbooks, for example *Brindley, G.W., Brown, G.: Crystal Structures of Clay Minerals and their X-ray Identification. Mineralogical Society, London, 1980.*

First, the chlorite refinement.

In the first refinement of chlorite you used no disordering models and used ´´cell parameters`` and ´´occupation of octahedra``. So you refined the lattice parameters and the occupancy of all atoms?

Yes, the lattice parameters.
Only the occupation/substitution of atoms with significant difference in scattering power can be refined in powder diffraction. In case of chlorites, the substitution Fe-Mg at the 4 octahedral positions can be refined.


In the second refinement, you use na anisotropic line broadening ´´in the traditional way``. So you used a simple ellipsoidal model and/or spherical harmonics?

Simple ellipsoidal model, assuming very thiny platy crystals. But it was clear that this model must fail, see above the known fact of disorder in layer stacking. And from microscopy it is clear that the "crystals" are much too large to produce significant line broadening from size effects. You can see this for a lot of clay minerals: If the "ellipsoidal crystallite shape" model would be ok, the 00l reflections would have the broadest lines, and the 110, 020 and so on should be the sharpest ones. But this is not true in practice, mostly the hkl are terribly broadenend and smeared, but the 00l are still sharp.

The last refinement, describing a real structure. You used for the reflections k  3.n (broadened peaks) a ´´rod-like intensity distribution``, with the rod being projected by the cosine of the direction on the diffractogram. You used also the lenghts of the rods as a parameter, so as the dimension of the rods for 0k0 with k  3.n. I would like to know how did you ´´project`` these rods and use them in the refinement.

For the k = 3.n reflections, you used an anisotropic broadening model (aniso crystallyte size) and and isotropic broadening model (microstrain broadening). But you said that crystallite size is an isotropic line broadening in my kaolinite refinement and I should not use it. So I use or not the cry size?

Yes, we used an "additional" ellipsoidal broadening in order to describe any potential "thinning" of the crystals. But this broadening model was not significant because the broadening was dominated by the stacking faults. A "microstrain" makes sense because of natural chlorits are sometimes zoned in their chemical composition and a distribution of the lattice constants may occur. In one of your mails you mentioned "crysize gave reasonable numbers with low error", and from that I assumed you looked only on the errors of the isotropic crysize as defined in Topas. You must know what model you did apply. But it is clear that any "crysize" model is inadequate to describe the line broadening of kaolinite.

Now the kaolinite refinement.

In the first refinement was used fixed atomic positions and a conventional anisotropic peak broadening. This conventional anisotropic peak broadening would be the simple ellipsoidal model and/or spherical harmonics?!

Only ellipsoidal model, assuming a platy crystal shape, see above. Only for comparision.


After that you use the introduced model of disorfering. Is this model the same of the chlorite (rods for k  3.n and microstrain broadening and anisotropic crystallite size?

Not exactly the same like in chlorite, because the disorder in kaolinite is much more complicated like in chlorites. See also the textbook cited above, and extensive works of Plancon and Tchoubar. Thus, most of the natural kaolinites show stacking faults along b/3 as well as along a, and additional random faults. Thus, more broadening parameters had to be defined, and this is not completely perfect until now. See the presentation I sent you last week.

Best regards

Reinhard Kleeberg
begin:vcard
fn:Reinhard Kleeberg
n:Kleeberg;Reinhard
org;quoted-printable:TU Bergakademie Freiberg;Institut f=C3=BCr Mineralogie
adr:;;Brennhausgasse 14;Freiberg;Sachsen;D-09596;Germany
email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
title:Dr.
tel;work:(+49) (0)3731 393244
tel;fax:(+49)(0)3731 393129
url:http://www.mineral.tu-freiberg.de/mineralogie/roelabor/
version:2.1
end:vcard

Reply via email to