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

The purchase of a modern diffractometer will enable many researchers at the Hydrogen Research institute to continue their activities.  more specifically, the following projects will benefit most of the replacement of our old  diffractometer.Metal hydrides (Huot).   For development of new hydrogen storage materials it is essential to know the crystal structure of the new compounds we synthesized.  The best way to get this information is by X-ray powder diffraction. Moreover, by Rietveld refinement of the powder pattern we could evaluate the crystallite size (nanostructure), strain, phase abundance, and atomic positions; all parameters that are essential for the design of new alloys. Presently, my group is using the diffractometer 3 to 4 days a week and the unavailability of a diffractometer basically stop my research.Carbon materials (Hamelin).  The diffractometer is used for characterization of carbon supported catalyst.  Due to the nature of our process, only small quantities are available for X-ray diffraction.  With the present diffractometer this means a long measuring time and a low resolution.  A modern diffractometer with a more efficient X-ray detector will enable us to acquire a pattern much faster and with a better resolution thus enhancing our research output.Nanoporous and metal-organics (Chahine).  X-ray diffraction is an essential tool to our development work of hydrogen storage materials especially the nanoporous metal-organics and metal doped nanocarbons, It is our main tool for determining structure, phase purity and stability of the sample. In addition the availability of a tool to study the phase transformation under hydrogen atmosphere will be of tremendous help for the separation of physical and chemical binding processes.