As considerable attention has been given to the ternary alloys of Ag-Ge-S in the glassy state because of the highly ionic conduction of silver ions, the atomic structure of these materials has been investigated by X-ray diffraction. Two series of specimens have been examined: One is Ag
xGe
2S
3 (
x=0∼2.1) alloys in which a given amount silver atoms is dissolved. The other is Ag
xGe
1−xS (
x=0.33∼0.7) alloys in which a portion of germanium atoms is replaced by silver atoms. The intensity measurements of X-ray diffraction have been carried out by the step scanning method with Mo
Kα radiation in the range of 5° to 150°. The interference function was derived from the analysis of data and the pair distribution function
gE(
r) has also been obtained by the Fourier transformation. The following results have been obtained:
(1) In Ag
xGe
2S
3, the nearest neighbour distance
R1 increases with increasing
x. A similar behaviour is seen in Ge
XS, where
X varies from 2.0 to 1.0. In Ag
xGe
1−xS, on the other hand,
R1 does not change with
x.
(2) In both series of the specimens, the height of first peaks decreases with increasing
x, while the peak width increases.
(3) In Ag
xGe
2S
3, the coordination number obtained from the first peak of
gE(
r) increases with increasing
x, but in Ag
xGe
1−xS the coordination number does not change with
x.
A theoretical pair distribution function
gC(
r) has been estimated on the assumption that the atomic position of GeS and GeS
2 is spatially fluctuated by a Gaussian probability. The results fairly agree with the experimental ones, which implies that the basic structures of both series resemble to those of GeS and GeS
2. Since the peak width of
gE(
r) increases with the amount of silver atoms, it might be suggested that a part of siler atoms occupies the “interstitial site” and consequently these “interstitial ions” contribute to the highly ionic conduction.
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