Ambient and Non-ambient driven X-ray Powder Diffraction: Insights into the Structure- Property Relationship in Powders

In technologically intense and competitive search for the applicable and best-in-class materials, one of the most important targets and a crucial step includes a meticulous planning of the research strategy and collection of a high quality experimental data, in order to find and/or boost the optimal combination of their physical and chemical characteristics, delivering a sistematically tailored functionalities of the final product. Regardless of whether we have a pure inorganic, or hybrid, inorganic-organic material, an understanding the synergy of accurate crystal structure, sufficient purity, tunable particle and/or strain size is still a quite challenging multitask. Keeping in mind the correlation of these parameters, the application of the room temperature (RT) powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) and structural evolution with pressure from the synchrotron radiation experiments are independently highlighted on the selected inorganic and inorganic-organic exemplars, pointing out the necessity and preciousness of this characterization method, without which it would be impossible to relate the crystal structure to physical properties. The possibility of performing the non-ambient in situ synchrotron radiation experiments, enables deeper insight into the correlation between structural features (e.g phase transition mechanism) and mechanical properties of functional materials.