Beyond Powder Diffraction. What Else Can X-Rays do to Help My Company?

X-ray powder diffraction is a powerful tool for determining the crystalline and amorphous phases present in a material, but there are a wide variety of other analytical techniques using synchrotron radiation that provide valuable information for product development and patent litigation.

Here are just a few available techniques:

1) X-ray tomography and micro-tomography are techniques that can be thought of as a CAT Scan of a sample. Using one version of this method, combined with diffraction, one can map the dispersion of specific compounds in a product, or look for tiny defects and micro-cracks in materials.

2) X-ray fluorescence microscopy is a technique in which maps the distribution of a particular element in a material. For example, manufacturers often want to understand how a particular compound (containing a particular element) is dispersed in their product.

3) X-ray absorption Spectroscopy probes local, rather than long-range order in a material.  It provides information regarding the chemical environment around a specific element that is complementary to x-ray diffraction.

4) Because of the high intensity available at synchrotron sources, single crystal diffraction and structure solutions on micron-sized samples has become routine.