Absorption Correction for Reliable Pair Distribution Functions from Low Energy X-ray Sources

This paper explores the development and testing of a simple absorption correction model for processing powder X-ray diffraction data from Debye-Scherrer geometry laboratory X-ray experiments. This may be used as a preprocessing step before using PDFgetX3 to obtain reliable pair distribution functions (PDFs). Various experimental and theoretical methods for estimating μ<i>R</i> were explored, and the most appropriate μ<i>R</i> values for correction were identified for different capillary diameters and X-ray beam sizes. We identify operational ranges of μ<i>R</i> where a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio is possible after correction. A user-friendly software package, diffpy.labpdfproc, is presented that can help estimate μ<i>R</i> and perform absorption corrections with a rapid calculation for efficient processing.