Nanocrystalline n-AlO(OH) (Disperal P2 ® of Sasol) was investigated by means of the atomic pair distribution function (PDF). The PDF is derived from powder diffraction data, an ideally resolved PDF is obtained from a synchrotron source which provides a large maximal scattering vector length Q max > 300 nm -1 . Here, however, we were able to reveal atomic structure details of the ~ 4 nm particles from in-house diffraction data (Q max = 130 nm -1 ): PDF least squares model refinements show that n-AlO(OH) is of the layered Boehmite structure type (oC16, Cmcm). But the structure is uniformly distorted in domains of ~ 2 nm size within the nano particles. The hydrogen bonds between the layers are widened up significantly by +13 pm, accounting for the higher reactivity when compared to microcrystalline Boehmite. Our results from only one "nanocrystallographic" experiment are consistent with a trend which was found via the Rietveld technique on a series of AlO(OH) of different crystallite size (Bokhimi et al., 2001 [2]). In addition, the PDF contains information on structural distortion as a function of (coherence) domain size within the nano particles.
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