ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a short introduction for extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) including a simple theoretical description. It highlights important aspects of the technical requirements of an EXAFS experiment followed by a basic description of data analysis approaches, and deals with a few examples from EXAFS studies in the eld of biomineralization. EXAFS analysis provides details on the short-range atomic arrangement around a central absorbing atom, including the type and number of nearest neighbors, their distances to the absorber, and the degree of local disorder. While the most important beamline property for x-ray absorption near edge structure is the energy bandwidth of the monochromatic beam, the most important properties for EXAFS are the purity of the incident beam with respect to higher harmonics and its intensity stability over the required large energy range. Energy-dispersive-EXAFS uses a polychromatic instead of a monochromatic beam to illuminate the sample with the entire energy spread at once.
