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PXRD facilities

Evans Group Powder X-ray Diffraction Equipment

The group has state of the art equipment for powder diffraction measurements. Some (old!) pictures are at the bottom of the page.

We have a Bruker d8 diffractometer 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 the d8 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 two general use d8 diffractometers which can be configured in either parallel or divergent beam mode. This allows both reflection and transmission measurements. These instruments can use an Oxford Cryosystems cobra system for measurements on capillary samples from 100 to 500 K and an Anton Paar furnace attachment allowing flat plate or capillary samples to be measured from room temperature to 1200 C. They’re well suited for studying either inorganic or organic materials.

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.

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
  • Estimation of amorphous content
  • Particle size/strain analysis
  • Studies on polymorphism of pharmaceutical materials