Applied crystallography

Kraków, Poland, September, 2003

The XIX Int'l Conference on Applied Crystallography was held in Kraków, Poland, September 1–4, 2003. As with the previous conferences, this one was organized by the Inst. of Physics and Chemistry of Metals of the U. of Silesia in Katowice. This time the conference was followed by the Summer School on Polycrystalline Structure Determination by Direct Methods (September 4-7, 2003). The Committee of Crystallography and the Committee of Material Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences were the co-organizers of both events. The IUCr awarded scholarships to enable young scientists to attend the conference and the school. The conference was also sponsored by the Rector of the U. of Silesia, Polish Ministry of Nat'l Education and Polish Academy of Sciences.

One hundred and twenty four participants from 18 countries gathered and engaged in lively discussions throughout the plenary, oral and posters sessions. There were 38 oral and 78 poster presentations. The plenary lectures were given by prominent scientists in the field of crystallography and structural studies - A. Authier, D. Balzar, H.J. Bunge, R. Cernik, J. Fiala, C. Giacovazzo, F. Izumi, P. Klimanek, G. Kostorz, K. Lukasiewicz, P. Scardi, V. Shekhtman and others. Topics included: development of methods and techniques in X-ray studies, crystal structure determination methods, crystallography of phase transformations, texture analysis, material structures – metals and alloys, ceramics, polymers, thin films, quasicrystals, amorphous materials, nanomaterials, and molecular crystals. For example, the traditional methods of line profile analysis have been widely discussed in view of their recent development in the field of powder pattern modelling based on a complex analysis of factors influencing line broadening such as defects, crystallite shape and distribution and others. Special attention was also paid to texture analysis including the problem of the influence of non-uniform dislocation density in hexagonal crystals. Also new programs for crystal structure determination consisting of a combination of direct methods and Montecarlo techniques as well as programs for structure refinement were presented.

The conference proceedings will be published by the World Scientific Publishing Co.

The organizers also took care of the social aspects, including an excursion to the Wieliczka salt mine – one of the oldest salt mines in Europe.

The School was organized as the conference satellite meeting. Solving crystal structures from powder data is not only a scientific challenge but also the solution for many industrial and technological problems. Teaching young scientists the expertise and know-how on the methods for crystal structure determination was the main purpose of this school. Under the direction of C. Giacovazzo and tutorship of C. Baerlocher, D. Balzar, E. Cheung, C. Giacovazzo, W. Lasocha, A.J. Markvardsen and P.E. Werner, 46 participants attended the lectures and practiced their skills at the extended computer sessions. The lectures were basic and advanced and covered powder indexing, full pattern decomposition, direct methods for crystal structure determination, Montecarlo methods, Rietveld refinement. Patterson techniques, structure solution from Powder Diffraction Data Using Evolutionary Algorithms. The students became familiar = with the following programs: ITO, DICVOL91, N_TREOR, PIRUM, PFLM, EXTRA, EXPO2002, DASH.

Danuta Stroz, Conference Secretary