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Updated: May 31, 2026

Microfluidic Chips for In Situ Crystal X-ray Diffraction and In Situ Dynamic Light Scattering for Serial Crystallography
Published on: April 24, 2018
RDFTools: a software tool for quantifying short-range ordering in amorphous materials
1Australian Center for Microscopy and Microanalysis, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia. drg.mitchell@sydney.edu.au
Abstract:
A software package for computing radial distribution functions and other pair correlation functions from electron diffraction patterns of disordered solids is presented. The package, called RDFTools, is freely available via the internet and allows rapid in situ measurements of such quantities as interatomic nearest neighbor distances, average bond angles and coordination numbers. The software runs under DigitalMicrograph™ (Pleasanton, California, Gatan), a very widely used program in transmission electron microscopy. All implemented algorithms have been designed to compute diffraction integrals and data-processing averages in a fast and efficient manner to enable quick processing of publication ready, quantitative pair distribution function information. In the development of RDFTools, significant attention was paid to provide a robust and intuitive user-interface for deriving reliable semiquantitative information. For example, RDFTools enables accurate pair separation distances to be revealed upon immediate interrogation at the microscope; even for potentially thick specimens and/or regions of unknown elemental composition.
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