Mario Birkholz
with contributions by Paul F. Fewster and Christoph Genzel
Thin Film Analysis by X-Ray Scattering
Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, January 2006, 356 pages, 101 exercises.

While X-ray diffraction investigation of powders and polycrystalline matter was at the forefront of materials science in the past, high-tech applications at the beginning of the 21st century are driven by the materials science of thin films. Very much an interdisciplinary field, physicists, materials researchers, chemists and engineers all have a common interest in thin films and their manifold uses and applications. Grain size, porosity, density, preferred orientation and other structural properties are important to know: whether thin films fulfill their intended function crucially depends on their structure and morphology once a chemical composition has been chosen. Although their backgrounds differ greatly, all the involved specialists deserve a profound understanding of how structural properties may be determined in order to perform their search of new and modern materials, coatings and functions.

Introduction
Chapter 1 - Principles of X-ray Diffraction
Chapter 2 - Identification of Chemical Phases
Chapter 3 - Line Profile Analysis
Chapter 4 - Grazing Incidence Configurations
Chapter 5 - Texture and Preferred Orientation
Chapter 6 - Residual Stress Analysis            (M. Birkholz and C. Genzel)
Chapter 7 - High-Resolution X-ray Diffraction  (M. Birkholz and P.F. Fewster)

Each chapter is supplemented by separate boxes on instrumental aspects and certain crystallographic structure-type compounds.

The crystallographic unit cells in the structure boxes were drawn by Cyrille Boudias and Daniel Monceau by virtue of the software package CaRIne Crystallography, Version 4.