Functional Cubic Thin Films — A Structure View

Real structure of materials influences their physical properties. Thus, the understanding of the relationship between the structure parameters and the materials properties is a necessary basis for materials design. X‐ray diffraction is a powerful experimental technique, which yields the required information about the microscopic and mesoscopic structure expressed in terms of lattice parameters, residual stress, microstrain, crystallite size, texture and crystal anisotropy. Application of advanced X‐ray methods and related computational procedures is illustrated on a detailed structure study of cubic uranium nitride thin films that shows the connection between the microscopic and the mesoscopic structure parameters.