Ab initio structure determination via powder X-ray diffraction

Structure determination by powder X-ray diffraction data has gone through a recent surge since it has become important to get to the structural information of materials which do not yield good quality single crystals. Although the method of structure completion when once the starting model is provided is facile through the Rietveld refinement technique, the structure solution ab initio is still not push-button technology. In this article a survey of the recent development in this area is provided with an illustration of the structure determination of alpha -NaBi3V2O10.