Local behaviour of negative thermal expansion materials

EXAFS can represent a powerful probe of the local behaviour of negative thermal expansion (NTE) materials, thanks to the possibility of measuring the expansion of selected inter-atomic bonds and the perpendicular relative atomic displacements. The effectiveness of EXAFS for NTE studies is illustrated by a comparison of results recently obtained on germanium, CuCl and the cuprites Cu2O and Ag2O. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.