Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2018
Three natural crystals of the wulfenite (PbMoO4)—stolzite (PbWO4) series were investigated by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The results indicate that the symmetry is I41/a from nearly pure wulfenite to intermediate compositions, in contrast to previous work which claimed a symmetry change to 74 symmetry (acentric) for intermediate compositions compared with I41/a (centric space group) for the end-members. The results reported here show that the reflections violating I41/a symmetry observed in this work and in a previous study are related primarily to λ/2 effects, even if Renninger effects are not excluded. Consequently, we find that the I41/a symmetry is retained throughout the wulfenite— stolzite.