Correction of specimen absorption in X-ray diffuse scattering experiments with area-detector systems

Methods for correcting specimen absorption in X-ray diffraction experiments, dedicated to two-dimensional area-detector systems and broad diffuse scattering phenomena, are implemented and tested. The respective transmission factors, in relation to the crystal or specimen shape, are applied to the intensity of every pixel of the two-dimensional detector. The pixel-wise approach allows for a fully quantitative treatment of continuous diffraction information, such as disorder diffuse scattering or scattering from amorphous materials, which is collected with a two-dimensional detector system. This is in contrast to routine data reduction, where the transmission factors are applied to the integrated Bragg intensities only. Furthermore, it is possible to assign different linear attenuation coefficients to the paths of the incident and scattered beams, as is desirable, for instance, in the case of X-ray holography with an internal resonant scatterer. Broad diffuse scattering data collected with synchrotron radiation and numerical calculations are used to study in detail the influence of experimental parameters on the accuracy of the pixel-wise absorption correction.