MRI: Acquisition of a Powder X-ray Diffractometer for Research and Teaching

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With this award from the Major Research Instrumentation program (MRI), Feng Chen and colleagues Jonathan M. Husch, William H. McCarroll, Gary A. Pajer, and Hongbing Sun from Rider University will acquire a powder X-ray diffractometer (XRD) system to support multidisciplinary research and education programs. The XRD will serve faculty members and students from four disciplines. The instrument will provide a focus for the integration of materials science with the fields of chemistry, physics, geology and environmental sciences at Rider University. It will enhance research in nanotechnology, solid state chemistry, non-linear optics, and the study of garnet compositions and soil mineral patterns for geology and environmental science.The X-ray diffractometer allows accurate and precise measurements of the three dimensional structure of a molecule, including bond distances and angles, and it provides accurate information about the spatial arrangement of the molecule relative to the neighboring molecules. The synthesis of materials having an extended structure, such as polymers, inorganic solids, glasses, or gels, often yields a polycrystalline or phase-impure powder. Powder XRD is the most powerful tool available for the structural characterization of such products. Powder XRD pattern can elucidate the structure and relative abundance of the crystalline phases present in a sample, it can expose the existence of preferred crystalline orientation (called texture) of a film of a material relative to a crystalline substrate surface, and the XRD linewidth can provide an estimate of the mean crystallite (or grain) diameter. In addition, the structure of extremely thin films (100 nm) of materials can be investigated by powder-XRD whereas such films cannot be probed by single-crystal XRD. These studies will have an impact in a number of areas such as chemistry, materials and geology.