X-RAY DIFFRACTION USED TO MEASURE LEVELS OF SP~2 AND SP~3 CARBON IN FOSSIL FUELS: A MICROCOSM OF THE 1990'S, WORKING HARDER AND GETTING LESS

摘要

The proposition that a diffraction peak can be "far too intense to be caused by amorphous scattering and far too broad to be caused by conventional diffraction" is analyzed and found to be in error. Theoretically, Debye peaks arising from intermolecular interference in liquids and conventional Bragg peaks are part of a continuum. Experimentally, with respect to the "(002)" peak in benzenoid materials, not all aromatic carbons need contribute to an intermolecular interference peak, so that determinations of sp~2 or sp~3 carbon abundance based on analysis of only the "(002)" peak are necessarily flawed. As a separate but related matter, journal citation trends of relevance to the court case Gordon and Breach v. AIP are analyzed.