Molecular magnets, emerging area

Miller, J. S. and A. J. Epstein, Molecular magnets An emerging area of materials chemistry, in Materials Chemistry An Emerging Discipline, L. V. Interrante, L. A. Casper, and A. B. Ellis, eds., American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C., 1995, p. 161. 

The driving force behind the rapid development of powder diffraction methods over the past 10 years is the increasing need for structural characterization of materials that are only available as powders. Examples are zeolite catalysts, magnets, metal hydrides, ceramics, battery and fuel cell electrodes, piezo- and ferroelectrics, and more recently pharmaceuticals and organic and molecular materials as well as biominerals. The emergence of nanoscience as an interdisciplinary research area will further increase the need for powder diffraction, pair-distribution function (PDF) analysis of powder diffraction pattern allows the refinement of structural models regardless of the crystalline quality of the sample and is therefore a very powerful structural characterization tool for nanomaterials and disordered complex materials. 

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