Determination of phase ratio in polymorphic materials by x-ray absorption spectroscopy: The case of anatase and rutile phase mixture in TiO2

We demonstrate that x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) can be used as an unconventional characterization technique to determine the proportions of different crystal phases in polymorphic samples. As an example, we show that ratios of anatase and rutile phases contained in the TiO2 samples obtained by XAS are in agreement with conventional x-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements to within a few percent. We suggest that XAS measurement is a useful and reliable technique that can be applied to study the phase composition of highly disordered or nanoparticle polymorphic materials, where traditional XRD technique might be difficult