Concepts of Charge Density Analysis: The Experimental Approach

Abstract

Though the potential for deriving electron distributions from elastic diffraction data was recognized in the decade following Von Laue’s discovery of X-ray diffraction, its practical application was delayed by many unrecognized problems of both experimental and theoretical nature. Only with the advent of four-circle diffractometers and high-speed computing could sufficiently accurate data be collected, corrected for physical effects like extinction, absorption and thermal diffuse scattering, and interpreted with a scattering factor formalism based on a more realistic description of bonded atoms.