Quantitative structural studies by means of the energy-dispersive method with X-rays from a storage ring

Test experiments were made using the X-ray energy-dispersive method at the storage ring DORIS (Hamburg) working in the single-bunch mode. It is shown that the spectral distribution of the incident beam calculated from the storage-ring parameters is in very good agreement with that derived from measured diffraction patterns of known substances, and thus it can be used for structural studies. This is illustrated with results of profile-fitting refinement applied to urea (CH₄N₂O) and naphthalene (C₁₀H₈). It is also shown that because of an improved detector system and the time structure of the radiation emitted from the storage ring one is able to record 7 × 10⁴ photons per second and obtain reliable patterns in times of the order of 1  s.