Indirect determination of the incoherent scattering in disordered carbon materials

An indirect method of determining the intensity of the incoherent X-ray scattering component of the total scattering intensity from a disordered carbon material is presented. It utilizes the incoherent scattering from a crystalline carbon sample (standard) measured at a diffraction angle 2θ far from a Bragg interference maximum, and requires only knowledge of the linear absorption coefficient μ and density ρ of the material. The results obtained for angles 2θ in the range 100–160° show that the direct and indirect determinations of the incoherent scattering are in excellent agreement. The indirect method takes a simple form when the disordered and crystalline carbon sample thicknesses, t, are optimized either for small-angle scattering, μt = 1, or for wide-range diffraction, exp [−μt/sin θ] ≃ 0.