Introduction to twinning

A twinned crystal is an aggregate in which different domains are joined together according to a specific symmetry operation: the twin law. The diffraction patterns derived from different domains are rotated, reflected or inverted with respect to each other, depending on the nature of the relationship between the different domains, and weighted according to the quantity of a particular domain present in the crystal. The diffraction pattern measured during data collection is a superposition of all of these. Reflections from different domains may overlap and twinned crystals fall broadly into two categories in which either all reflections or only certain zones of reflections are affected by overlap. The former occurs when a crystal lattice belongs to a higher point group than the crystal structure itself; the latter frequently occurs when the twin law is a symmetry operation belonging to a higher symmetry supercell.