Pair distribution function analysis of ammonium nitrate - comparison of PDF- and Rietveld-analysis

Energetic materials are often nanocrystalline, amorphous, liquid or gel structured. Therefore, it is difficult to obtain structural information from these materials by conventional structure analysis using X-ray diffraction. This contribution shows the possibility to achieve structural information with the aid of the pair distribution function (PDF) compared to the Rietveld-Analysis.The energetic material ammonium nitrate was chosen as an example for the test of PDF structure analysis of energetic materials. The diffraction data were used for calculating the PDFs and the results are evaluated to improve measurement conditions for energetic materials. The lattice parameters of structure, Rietveld-Analysis and PDF-Analysis show nearly the same values. It is shown that it is possible to calculate reasonable PDFs of energetic materials from laboratory measurements.