A review on the Parameter Space Concept and its use for crystal structure determination

Abstract

We present a comprehensive review of the emerging crystal structure determination method Parameter Space Concept (PSC), which solves and refines either partial or complete crystal structures by mapping each experimental or theoretical observation as a geometric interpretation, bypassing the conventional Fourier inversion. The PSC utilizes only a few \xray (equivalently neutron) diffraction amplitudes or intensities and turns them into piecewise analytic hyper-surfaces, called isosurfaces, embedded in a higher-dimensional orthonormal Cartesian space (Parameter Space (PS)). It reformulates the crystal determination task into a geometric interpretation, searching for a common intersection point of different isosurfaces. The art of defining various kinds of isosurfaces, based on signs, amplitude or intensity values, normalized ratios, and ranking of reflections, offers multiple choices of adapting methods in PSC based on available experimental or theoretical observations. The elegance of PSC stems from one-dimensional projections of atomic coordinates, enabling the construction of full three-dimensional crystal structures by combining multiple projections. By these means, the user may explore homometric and non-homometric solutions within both centric and acentric structures with spatial resolution remarkably down to pm, even with a limited number of diffraction reflections. Having demonstrated the potential of PSC for various synthetic structures and exemplarily verified direct application to realistic crystals, the origin and development of PSC methods are coherently discussed in this review. Notably, this review emphasizes the theoretical foundations, computational strategies, and potential extensions of PSC, outlining the roadmap for future applications of PSC in the broader context of structure determination from experimental diffraction observations.