XRD equipment provides new opportunities for analysing materials
Mid Sweden University has signed an agreement for a new X-ray diffraction equipment (XRD) worth SEK 6 million from Ramcon AB. The instrument, a SmartLab XE from Rigaku, is an advanced and comprehensive system in X-ray diffraction.
The new instrument enables everything from standard measurements to analyses of thin films and PDF analyses (Pair Distribution Function).
The equipment comes with a 2D detector and three X-ray sources, which provides great flexibility and high precision in the measurements. The installation is planned for June and will be commissioned in early autumn.
The University's previous equipment in the field has been outdated. As materials research grows, more advanced and complete instruments are now required to meet the needs of researchers. Rigaku, a leading Japanese manufacturer of X-ray diffraction, will thus become a new supplier to the MILAB instrument fleet.
Analyzing crystal structures
An X-ray diffraction equipment is used to analyze the crystal structure of solid materials and is a standard instrument in materials research. The technology has long been used in traditional fields such as metal and steel alloy development as well as ceramic materials.
With today's modern systems, researchers can also study nanostructures, thin films and colloidal systems in completely new ways, which opens up for advanced research in, for example, nanotechnology and functional materials.