PXRD facilities
Evans Group Powder X-ray Diffraction Equipment
The group has state of the art equipment for powder diffraction measurements. Click here for larger pictures of the equipment.
We have a Bruker d8 diffractometer equipped with a vantec position sensitive detector.
We have a second d8 equipped with a LynxEye position sensitive detector allowing one to record rapid high intensity, high resolution data sets. This instrument has the option of a Goebel mirror for parallel beam studies on flat plate or capillary sample.
We have variable temperature stages that can be mounted on both these d8’s allowing samples to be measured from 16 K to 1500 K. Temperatures from 300 to 1500 K are achieved using an environmentally heated htk1200 furnace, from 100 K to 650 K using a ttk450 cryofurnace and from 16 to 300 K using the pHeniX cryostat co-developed with Oxford cryosystems.
We have a 3rd d8 system which can be configured in either parallel or divergent beam mode. This allows both reflection and transmission measurements. The instrument has an Oxford Cryosystems cobra system allowing measurements on capillary samples from 100 to 500 K.
Our 4th d8 system has a Mo source and Ge(111) monochromator for high resolution measurements on absorbing samples in transmission geometry. It has an Oxford Cryosystems cobra system allowing measurements on capillary samples from 100 to 500 K.
The various instruments can be configured for high resolution measurements suitable for structure determination and Rietveld refinements, or for high intensity allowing the rapid (minutes) study of kinetic processes or phase transitions on different types of samples.
We also have a (currently mothballed) Siemens d5000 diffractometer equipped with a 40 position sample changer and sol-X energy dispersive detector. This is used for routine room temperature measurements and for samples with high fluorescence.
Typical areas of application include:
- Structure refinements of inorganic oxides
- Structure solutions of inorganic, organic and composite materials
- Studies on negative thermal expansion materials as a function of temperature
- Studies on phase transitions of materials
- Kinetic studies in the solid state
- Studies on crystallisation of amorphous materials as a function of temperature
- Qualitative phase analysis of unknown samples
- Quantitative phase analysis
- Particle size/strain analysis
Larger versions of the diffractometer images are shown here.