First Hutch

There are 3 experimental placements in the first experimental hutch. The first is a heavy duty huber diffractometer with vertical rotation axis and Frelon2K CCD camera. The second is an 8 circle kappa diffractometer.

The huber diffractometer was installed in 2008 and offers a very large working area and load capacity (>100 kg) for complex sample environments. Either white beam or monochromatic x-ray beams are available, with energies of 25-140 keV and sizes of 0.8x0.8 mm down to ~7x20 (HxV) microns. By exploiting the fast readout of the Frelon camera and high x-ray flux, 2D diffraction images can be collected very quickly, allowing time resolved in-situ studies to be carried out. Due to the vertical rotation axis, this instrument can also be used for single crystal diffraction. A second rotation axis can be added in a fixed kappa angle geometry to provide single crystal data which are highly complete and redundant, if required. The figure shows the experimental installation for an aerodynamic leviation experiment:

Since 1999, a heavy duty high precision 8-circle kappa diffractometer from Kuma has been available. The sphere of confusion has been measured at 14 µm and the sample arm can take a load of 5 kg. The diffractometer is normally used with a silicon (111) analyser crystal and point detector, giving high resolution diffraction data. By mounting an xyz translation stage the diffractometer may be used for measuring residual stresses in a range of materials. To see a video of the diffractometer "dancing", click here.