Hi all,
I thought I'd add my two cents:
I agree with everything Bruce said (!), but I think it is worth
emphasizing one aspect of this issue. Basically, unless I'm using a
mutiple-element fit with some clever constraints (not yet available
in Artemis, but soon, I gather), any determination of coordination
number is likely to be pretty uncertain. Not only does N correlate
completely with S02 for a single shell fit, it is also likely to
correlate strongly with sigma2 (or the Debye or Einstein temperature
or whatever I'm using as the free parameter). Multiple-shell fits
help when I can use them, but if I don't know the coordination number
for the first shell, how likely is it that I know the structure of
the material well enough to fit outer shells? Although you may see
coordination numbers determined by EXAFS with an "uncertainty" of 1
in publications, this is usually something like the uncertainty
reported in IFEFFIT--it probabIy doesn't include systematic errors
like the effect of assumptions concerning the Debye-Waller factor or
S02. In most cases if I'm looking for a first shell coordination
number via EXAFS I'm not counting on better than a factor of two
accuracy. That may still be useful in some cases, but doesn't help
distinguish between, say, tetrahedral and octahedral coordination.
So, if I'm only looking for a factor of 2, and if I'm pretty sure my
sample is homogenous and of a consistent and appropriate thickness,
I'm happy to just constrain S02 to 0.90 or 0.85 or whatever, knowing
that the arbitrary choice of S02 is probably introducing an
uncertainty of less than 20% in the coordination number. Since this
is still considerably less than I generally believe is introduced by
other issues (such as the scheme used for the Debye-Waller factors),
it's good enough for me.
--Scott Calvin
Naval Research Lab
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