Size–strain study of NiO nanoparticles by X-ray powder diffraction line broadening

Abstract We show that the nanoparticle sizes calculated from the X-ray powder diffraction need to be analyzed more carefully when calculated by the Scherrer equation. When nanoparticles are not perfect crystals, microstrain contributes to the line broadening of diffraction peaks. This additional width of the diffraction peak can introduce a wrong estimate to the nanoparticle size. In this work, we show how to calculate directly the size and the microstrain for NiO nanoparticles using the Williamson–Hall plotting and compare with results obtained from the Scherrer equation. In additional to these results is that the straight line obtained in the Williamson–Hall plotting shows the homogeneity of the nanoparticles.