Determination of Absolute Structure of Chiral Crystals Using Three-Wave X-ray Diffraction

We propose a new method to determine the absolute structure of chiral crystals, which is based on the chiral asymmetry of multiple scattering diffraction. It manifests as a difference in the azimuthal dependence of the forbidden Bragg reflection intensity measured with left and right circularly polarized X-ray beams. Contrary to the existing ones, the suggested method does not use X-ray anomalous dispersion. The difference between the Renninger scans with circularly polarized X-rays has been experimentally demonstrated for the 001 reflection intensities in the right- and left-handed quartz single crystals. A Jmulti-based code on model-independent three-wave-diffraction approach has been developed for quantitative description of our experimental results. The proposed method can be applied to various structures including opaque, organic and monoatomic crystals, even with only light elements. To determine the type of isomer, the Renninger plot of a single forbidden reflection is sufficient.