Rigaku D-Max zero background sample holders

This project started with a phone call several months ago from a Canadian government lab. They had a very specific application so the design was driven much more by their requirements than most zero-background holder designs. A 1mm deep well with a zero-background plate at the bottom was a key specification. We tried several options for creating this, but settled on a two-part design with a solid “floor” plate and a ring above it. As it turns out, cutting a

NIST 1976c custom mount

It’s easy to forget how much of our scientific work hinges upon comparative data. The entire field of metrology is concerned with the verification and maintenance of “standard reference materials” (SRMs). Creating a perfect reference standard essentially involves proving a negative. In the XRD world, we need to prove that there are no impurities, no crystalline defects, no unaccounted for thermal variations, no stress/strain effects present, and above all, that the first unit produced is effectively identical to the last

Mystery crystals

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it’s the lifeblood of a well-functioning analytical lab. A few days ago, Todd was preparing a water chiller for shipping and washed out some corrosion products with acetic acid. The resulting solution was left in a beaker over the weekend and when we returned, he noticed that it had formed rather large crystals. So he did what any curious person with a lab full of XRD instrumentation would do. He ground it up

What’s really coming out of my XRD tube?

We’ve been experimenting with better ways to quantify the quality of XRD tubes in the shop. We use these tests on new and used tubes to monitor performance in two key areas. 1) Intensity 2) Spectral purity. What we’ve settled on is a test that involves a wavelength-dispersive approach which gives us a lot of intensity to work with while eliminating background scatter and fluorescence effects. Basically, we’re able to extract more information from the data because the “noise” is almost

Bruker D2 Phaser Sample Holders

KS Analytical Systems now offers custom sample holders for the Bruker D2 Phaser 6-position autosampler. These can be finished to order with any depth and diameter of well or a zero-background plate (ZBH) with or without a well ground in the surface.

Sample holders for Rigaku Miniflex systems

KS Analytical Systems now offers custom sample holders for Rigaku Miniflex systems. The 6-position autosamplers and rotation stages (and even some fixed stages) make use of the magnetic disk design for holding powder without taking up much extra room in the diminutive benchtop. Top-loadingRear-loadingZero-background

Energy-dispersive detector systems for XRD applications

Energy-dispersive detectors have been in use on XRD systems for decades, but have always come with caveats. Low energy resolution, Liquid nitrogen cooling, slow start-up and tedious/cryptic tuning controls have limited their popularity in many applications. Silicon Drift technology solves most of these issues and modern electronics covers the rest. The new KSA-SDD system for X-ray diffraction utilizes a full spectrum EDXRF detector which is fully software tuned. The result is a detection system with high enough energy resolution to