WHAT CAN DIFFRACTION TELL US ABOUT MOBILE IONS

The inherent inadequacies of conventional diffraction methods in providing meaningful information about ion transport mechanisms for mobile-ion systems are well known. It will be shown, however, that a combination of non-conventional model refinement, systematic ion-exchange to vary composition, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation can help rationalize the superposed time- and space-averaged picture derived from conventional single-crystal X-ray diffraction. This will be illustrated by examples taken from work on the beta-aluminas.