Rapid structure determination of the hydrogen-containing compound Cs₂C₂O₄·H₂O by joint single-crystal X-ray and powder neutron diffraction

The structure determination of caesium oxalate monohydrate using single-crystal X-ray diffraction, powder neutron diffraction data and a combination of both has been undertaken. Results show that even for hydrogen-containing materials data collected rapidly on a high-flux neutron diffractometer improve the refinement such that accurate positional and thermal displacement parameters can be extracted for all atom types. This contrasts with structural models extracted from either data set alone that demonstrate the inherent limitations of the individual diffraction methods. The rapidity with which useful neutron diffraction data has been collected from hydrogen-containing compounds, 10 min in this study, indicates that the technique should be widely applicable allowing the facile and accurate extraction of hydrogen positions for many compounds.