The viability of the direct-space strategy TALP (Vallcorba et al., 2012b) to solve crystal structures of molecular compounds from laboratory powder diffraction data is shown. The procedure exploits the accurate metric refined from a ‘Bragg-Brentano’ powder pattern to extract later the intensity data from a second ‘texture-free’ powder pattern with the DAJUST software (Vallcorba et al., 2012a). The experimental setup for collecting this second pattern consists of a circularly collimated X-ray beam and a 2D detector. The sample is placed between two thin Mylar® foils, which reduces or even eliminates preferred orientation. With the combination of the DAJUST and TALP software a preliminary but rigorous structural study of organic compounds can be carried out at the laboratory level. In addition, the time-consuming filling of capillaries with diameters thinner than 0.3mm is avoided.
