Sample Environment

One of the major general strengths of powder diffraction is the ability to carry out measurements under a wide range of conditions. Ancillary equipment available for experiments is as follows:

• Liquid-helium-cooled cryostat (Janis INC., USA). Spinning capillary to 4 K, and below (3 K on pumping) with pumping.
• Oxford Cryosystems Cryostream cold-nitrogen-gas blower. Capillary specimens in the range 80 - 500 K.
• Hot-air blower (commercialized by Cyberstar, France). Capillary specimens to 950ºC.
• Mirror Furnace. Sample contained in Pt capillary heated to ~1500ºC.
• ID31 is equiped with an automatic sample changer which can change up to 50 samples (in capillaries) on the axis of the diffractometer. Click here to see the robot in action.
• Translation stages etc. for measurements of residual strain in engineering components.
• Gas cells for in-situ or ex-situ loading of gases.
  
• Other equipments from the ESRF Sample Environment Pool upon special request.

The translating sample spinner can be seen in the figure below: