RECOVER THE PHASES FROM INTENSITY DATA OF X-RAY-DIFFRACTION

For many years, people believed that in conventional x-ray crystallogr aphy one can only record the scattering intensities but not the phases . In order to study structures at the atomic scale, one has to use mul tibeam measurement or to rely on additional knowledge such as bonding length and to fit the intensity data by trial structure models. In thi s letter, however, we show that the phases are in fact hidden in the i ntensity data and can be recovered by studying the peak shoulders. To demonstrate, the x-ray diffraction data of aluminum powder were used t o recover the phases and to reconstruct the electron density map. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.