TECHNIQUES FOR THE STUDY OF THE STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES.

The evolution of our understanding of the behavior of oxide nanostructures depends heavily on the structural information obtained from a wide range of physical methods traditionally used in solid state physics, surface science and inorganic chemistry. In this chapter, we describe several techniques that are useful for the characterization of the structural properties of oxide nanostructures: X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scattering, X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS), Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The ultimate goal is to obtain information about the spatial arrangement of atoms in the nanostructures with precise interatomic distances and bond angles. This may not be possible for complex systems and one may get only partial information about the local geometry or morphology