The Use of Imaging Plates in Electron-Density Mapping with Synchrotron X-rays

Imaging-plate synchrotron data have been applied in the charge-density analyses of sodium nitroprusside and hexaamminechromium(III) hexacyanochromate(lll), collected at 100 and 50 K, respectively, and photons of wavelengths 0.656 and 0.394 A at the SUNY X3 beamline at NSLS. The electron-density maps show good agreement between chemically equivalent sections, while the multipole aspherical atom refinements lead to chemically reasonable population parameters, with trends reproduced in the available theoretical calculations. The results indicate that the time required for charge-density mapping with diffraction data can be greatly reduced by the application of the new technology.