Abstract
A procedure to retrieve the three-dimensional strain and composition fields of single-crystalline nanoparticles using a combination of anomalous and coherent x-ray diffraction was developed. The applicability of the method was demonstrated using numerically generated data for Ag/Au core-shell nanowires for which the epitaxy-induced strain field was simulated by the use of the finite element method for infinitely long nanowires with either abrupt (“as-prepared”) or diffuse (“as-annealed”) interfaces between core and shell. First, the influence of the elemental distribution and the associated inhomogeneous strains on the x-ray diffraction patterns were described. Next, the diffraction patterns as determined for different x-ray energies were inverted by applying phase retrieval algorithms. Only if diffraction patterns at different energies are available and inverted can the concentrations and displacements be obtained subject to specific assumptions.
6 More- Received 1 August 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.87.035408
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