日本ゼオライト学会　刊行物 Publication of Japan Zeolite Association

Recently, the synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction method is widely used for understanding physical and chemical properties related with their crystal structures. It has many advantages e.g. a wide range of photon energy, high-energy resolution, and high-brilliance. We have been developed the ultra high-resolution powder diffractometer in SPring-8 and a multi-purpose pattern-fitting system RIETAN-2000. They are suited for crystal structure analysis with complicated atomic arrangements such as zeolite compounds. A various powder pattern analysis, e.g. individual profile fitting, Le Bail method, Rietveld refinement, and MEM-based pattern fitting (MPF) combined the maximum entropy method can be used in RIETAN-2000, which is adopted for ab-initio structure determination, electron density distribution analysis, and disordered structure analyses. Combination of the synchrotron powder diffraction and these analyses gives us detailed structural information in atomic level with highly precision. In zeolite, the MPF analysis is the most powerful tool for visualizing framework structures from covalence bonding. Here, the latest structure analysis of zeolite materials using the synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction method is reviewed.