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Updated: Jan 17, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Atomic pair distribution functions from textured polycrystalline samples: fundamentals
Zizhou Gong1, Songsheng Tao2, Simon J L Billinge2
1Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.
Abstract:
Equations for the reduced structure function and atomic pair distribution function (PDF) of a textured polycrystalline sample are formulated in terms of the orientational distribution function (ODF) and the structure function from a single crystallite. This ODF is sensitive to orientational distributions of interatomic vectors and to differentiate it from the crystallographic case we call it the bond orientational distribution function (BODF). This BODF may be obtained from experimental data when the structure of the reference crystallite is known. It can be applied to nanocrystalline and amorphous samples going beyond the information present in a conventional crystallographic texture study.
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