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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 November 2012
Based only on a geometrical approach, we present a technique to index powder diffraction diagrams. This would allow us to find the cell parameters from the experimental data. It is well known that methods proposed in the literature make a direct use of the experimental data to build the cell, whereas our approach exploits them to calculate theoretical values, which could be multiples of two of the three vectors' lengths of the unit cell, and then uses them along with the experimental values. To show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, several examples, requiring only minor limitations in linear dimensions (<35 Å) and volume (<4500 Å3), are treated. For all considered cases, except the triclinic symmetry that is time consuming, the corresponding FORTRAN routine is executed in a reasonable time (<3 min with a 3 GHz processor).