The structure of amorphous carbon tetrachloride by neutron diffraction

A vapour-deposited sample of amorphous CCl₄ at 10 K has been studied by neutron diffraction. The measured structure factor confirms that the basic molecular unit is retained in the amorphous phase and a form-factor fit to the high Q-value data gives a CCl bond length of (1.770±0.002) Å. The inter-molecular function, D_M(Q) shows more structure than for the liquid phase and transformation to a real-space distribution function confirms that this is due to a much stronger orientational correlation between adjacent molecules in the amorphous solid. The density is found to be (25±5)% higher than in the liquid and the structural properties can be well described using a reference interaction site model (RISM).