X-ray Diffraction Laboratory

The X-Ray Diffraction Laboratory houses a Rigaku Ultima III X-ray diffraction system. The system is configured with a vertical Theta:Theta wide angle goniometer, high intensity Cu X-ray tube, and a scintillation detector. Optics provide for both Bragg-Brentano parafocusing and parallel-diffracted beams. Automatic variable divergence and antiscatter slits as well as fixed beam monochromator are available. Automation and data collection is accomplished through a Dell computer running Windows 7 and the Rigaku PDXL2 data processing software.

There is an additional offline computer with ICDD release 1998 powder diffraction mineral database files to be used with a legacy version of Jade processing software.

ICDD Database

The International Center for Diffraction Data supplies the database for our lab. The current version is PDF4+ 2019 and supplies roughly 412,083 powder reference files.