Path degeneracy and EXAFS analysis of disordered materials

Analysis of EXAFS data measured on a material with a disordered local configuration environment around the absorbing atom can be challenging owing to the proliferation of photoelectron scattering paths that must be considered in the analysis. In the case where the absorbing atom exists in multiple inequivalent sites, the problem is compounded by having to consider each site separately. A method is proposed for automating the calculation of theory for inequivalent sites, then averaging the contributions from sufficiently similar scattering paths. With this approach, the complexity of implementing a successful fitting model on a highly disordered sample is reduced. As an example, an analysis of Ti K-edge data on zirconolite, CaZrTi₂O₇, which has three inequivalent Ti sites, is presented.