Analysis of X-ray absorption fine structure using absolute X-ray mass attenuation coefficients: Application to molybdenum

XAFS structures are solved routinely and hundreds of publications appear per annum. Limitations in theoretical predictions and XAFS analytical frameworks lead to significant uncertainty in results. This impairs structural predictions and prevents ab initio determination. The highest accuracy experimental data have been obtained using the XERT and the most popular technique to analyse the structure. We apply an accurate χ2 fitting procedure to the molybdenum attenuation data including error propagation and improve the XAFS determinations by between 5% and 70%.