Stanislav, You mention that the amplitude remains consistent at about 0.3. However, what is happening to R and E0? Are these values also reasonable? I have found that, on occasion, a negative DWF is telling me that oxygen may not be the correct nearest neighbor. In these cases, R and E0 are always anomalous for the metal-oxygen path. Jeremy Kropf Chemical Engineering Division Argonne National Laboratory -----Original Message----- From: ifeffit-bounces@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov [mailto:ifeffit-bounces@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Stoupin, Stanislav A. Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 5:01 AM To: ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov Subject: [Ifeffit] a question about background refinement Hello all, Recently, I was able to improve fitting results in one of my projects using background refinement/subtraction in some "strange" way. I have got reasonable results but I was not totally sure if that was a valid approach. So, any feedback is appreciated. Here is the story: The system I am working on is Ru-Pt fcc alloy in a form of nanoparticles which may be oxidized. There is a reason to suspect presence of Ru-O bonds in the system. For the moment I am doing only the first shell analysis and the model I am using includes a part that models alloy first shell structure and also Ru-O path. If I don't use the Ru-O path in my model all the alloy parameters that I get from the fit are reasonable but the fit works bad in low R region. In that region there is a broad peak around 1.3A. The rmin parameter which is responsible for background refinement is set to 1A ( the same value was used when I did initial background subtraction in Athena). What I found a long time ago is that the fit could be significantly improved if I add the Ru-O path in my model (all alloy parameters were even better in that case). However, the DWF of Ru-O bond always went negative (about -0.005). At the same time I got reasonable value for the Ru-O amplitude which was about 0.3. I attempted to get rid of the negative DWF value many times. For example, if I fixed or restrained the DWF to a reasonable value (0.01 is what I expect) it didn't help. Finally, I decided to play with background refinement and what I have done can be described as follows: 1. Set rmin to about 1.5 A 2. Fit with my model which included Ru-O path with fixed delr = 0 and DWF = 0.01 ( the Ru-O amplitude was allowed to vary). Backgound fitting was turned on. 3. Subtracted the background from the data 4. Moved rmin back to 1A and allowed Ru-O delr to vary (the DWF remained fixed to 0.01) 5. Fit again with no background fitting A very decent looking fit came out as a result. (Chi-square was improved) The Ru-O amplitude was about 0.3 (as expected) and I had the DWF set to 0.01. Thanks for you patience if you read it all the way through. My own impression of what I have done is that it looks very artificial and the fact that I use AUTOBK two times bothers me a lot. The second time it is supposed to remove all structural information below 1.5A (rmin value). However, with this approach I hope to get rid of the background that dominates the fine structure in the low R region (Ru-O scattering) using some preliminary knowledge about the compound. I will be happy to hear any point of view. Thank you in advance. If you are interested and want more details please let me know. Stanislav -------------------------------- Stanislav Stoupin Research Assistant/PhD student BCPS Department Illinois Institute Of Technology E-mail:stousta@iit.edu _______________________________________________ Ifeffit mailing list Ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov http://millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffit