Abstract Structural analyses and phase quantification of solution-synthesised and commercially available boron carbide powders are conducted via Rietveld refinement of X-ray diffraction data. A fixed incidence parallel beam geometry is compared against the more commonly used Bragg-Brentano geometry. Fixed incidence parallel beam is found to have a significant advantage in phase quantification through the minimisation of peak aberrations due to the high X-ray transparency of boron carbide. The enhanced resolution and accuracy afforded by this technique allows for fundamental new insights into the phase content of boron carbide powders. Specifically, commercially obtained boron carbide powders are found to be multi-phasic, containing varying contents of both B~4C and B~6.5C phases. Solution-synthesised boron carbide produced in this study is found to comprise of B4.05C only. These findings have significant importance to the development of boron carbide for high-performance applications and present a potential avenue for the synthesis of high purity boron carbide powders with controlled stoichiometry.

中文翻译：

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碳化硼的精密结构和相分析

摘要 通过对 X 射线衍射数据进行 Rietveld 精修，对溶液合成的和市售的碳化硼粉末进行结构分析和相量化。将固定入射平行光束几何与更常用的 Bragg-Brentano 几何进行比较。由于碳化硼的高 X 射线透明度，固定入射平行光束通过最小化峰值像差在相位量化方面具有显着优势。这种技术提供的增强的分辨率和精度允许对碳化硼粉末的相含量有根本性的新见解。具体而言，发现商业获得的碳化硼粉末是多相的，包含不同含量的 B~4C 和 B~6.5C 相。发现本研究中生产的溶液合成碳化硼仅包含 B4.05C。这些发现对开发用于高性能应用的碳化硼具有重要意义，并为合成具有受控化学计量的高纯度碳化硼粉末提供了潜在途径。