Development and Application of Novel X-Ray Diffraction and Scattering Methods for the study of Crystalline, Amorphous, and Nanoscale Materials

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The funding will enable the development and application of synchrotron and in-house x-ray diffraction instrumentation and methods to study new materials such as nanostructures, polycrystalline materials and amorphous materials.***The development of such new materials and advances in analytical tools and computational methods go hand-in-hand. In particular, nanomaterials require a drastic rethinking of existing tools and the development of new instrumentation and methods. X-ray diffraction, responsible for the majority of crystal structure information we have today, has had an immense success in the determination of structures from small-molecule to protein crystals and also has potential for understanding synthesis and characterization of novel materials. ***I am the PI of the Brockhouse X-Ray Diffraction and Scattering Sector project, a major expansion of the Canadian Light Source (CLS) funded by the Canadian Foundation of Innovation. The commissioning of the Brockhouse Sector beamlines is scheduled to commence in the middle of 2017. ***Having led the design and construction of the Brockhouse Sector (B. Diaz et.al., Reviews of Scientific Instruments 85, 085104, 2014), I look forward to leading the commissioning phase of this large project. My group will develop the sector's capabilities for High-Resolution Pair Distribution Function measurements (HR-PDF), resonant x-ray diffraction, in-situ diffraction studies, high-temperature diffraction, grazing incidence reciprocal space mapping methods and three-dimensional x-ray diffraction (3D-XRD) microscopy. The proposed funding will enable my graduate students to commission the diffraction end stations and take advantage of the first-light of this state-of-the-art Canadian infrastructure. ***Novel x-ray diffraction and scattering techniques will be developed by my group to enable quantitative structure studies of new materials. The last decade has seen development and refinement of many useful tools such as scanning probes and high-resolution electron microscopy. Likewise, x-ray methods have evolved and have provided surprising results and new capabilities. This is due to high-brilliance synchrotron sources, new x-ray optics, large area detectors and fast computers. In addition, conventional in-house x-ray diffraction facilities have become much more productive because of advances in x-ray generator technology, x-ray optics and the sophisticated instrumentation carried over from synchrotron facility technology.**