Probing Strain and Microstrain in Nanostructured Thin Layers

The analysis of the structures and microstructures of nanostructured thin layers can be performed using laboratory grazing incidence diffraction, provided accurate corrections are performed to handle the instrumental broadening effects related to the experiment geometry for an impinging beam close to the critical angle. Implementing these corrections in Rietveld refinement software allows the accurate extraction of quantitative relevant information about the structure (strain and atomic positions) and the microstructure (crystallite size and microstrain), selectively probing the material on a depth of few nanometers.