Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Funds for a new multipurpose X-ray diffraction (XRD) system are sought to support several diverse research programs at Brock University. Standard instrumentation at any research university, XRD is the principle tool for characterizing many different types of materials from superconductors to inorganic nano-materials and thin films, from biological membranes to geological rocks. XRD can probe many properties of materials such as sample purity, crystal structure, particle size, thin-film thickness, preferred orientation, and texture.The equipment will provide major support for several research programs in materials physics, chemistry, biophysics, and earth science. All of these research programs require XRD for characterization and structural analysis in the study of any new material. The new multipurpose XRD system will replace an old, unreliable single-crystal diffractometer that no longer serves any of our faculty's needs. The new machine will be accessible to all members of the Faculty of Mathematics and Science. Three companies, Bruker, Rigaku, and PANalytical, offer comparable vertical scanning multipurpose research diffractometers exactly matched to the needs of Brock researchers. The scattering geometry of these machines can perform measurements of atomic structure on a much wider variety of samples, starting with powders and thin films, exactly the types of samples being produced in the faculty. In addition, these machines can perform many other measurements with little effort. These include preferred orientation (texture) measurements on nano-materials and ceramics, reflectometry at liquid/air, solid/liquid, or soft interfaces, and small angle scattering for micro-sized structures. All the diffractometers come with advanced analysis software for phase determination, texture analysis, and reflectometry model fitting.