An examination of the thermal expansion of urea using high-resolution variable-temperature X-ray powder diffraction

Abstract

Variable-temperature high-resolution capillary-mode powder X-ray diffraction is used to assess changes in unit-cell dimensions as a function of temperature over the range 188–328 K. No evidence was found for any polymorphic transformations over this temperature range and thermal expansion coefficients for urea were found to be αa= (5.27 ± 0.26) × 10−5 K−1and αc= (1.14 ± 0.057) × 10−5 K−1.