Single crystal diffraction, a standard for structure solution and refinement, allows a fast determination of the lattice parameters and space group of single crystals. It is of importance when there is not enough sample amount for Bragg Brentano diffraction experiments (PXRD). A small amount of polycrystalline material can be then mounted on the capillary and high intensity data without favoured orientation can be obtained while resolution is sacrificed (~0.4° 2Theta resolution in a standard experiment). 

d-Spacings <14 Angstrom can be measured.

Pixels can be binned to increase intensity.  Native resolution is 2048x2048, minimal 512x512. 

Our Offering: 

• Phase ID by xray diffraction of very small amounts of either polycrystalline or monocrystalline phases mounted on borosilicate glass..  
• each data set inclued a diffraction pattern (I vs. 2Theta) a table with corresponding d-values, 2Theta, intensities and match phases.
• mountable sample sizes: ~50µm - 1000 µm 
• the chemical composition can be mandatory to assign the mineral to an end member
• processing time approximately 1 month
• data is matched with ICDD PDF-4 Minerals, COD & Rigaku databases
• determination of the unit cell and space group (a,b,c; alpha, beta, gamma) from single crystals 
• structure solution and refinement on request 
• photo documentation is mandatory and needs to purchased one time per sample. This gives the analysis the layout to fill in the results

Important! The analytical photodocumentation (+6,20€) must be selected once for each sample separately and is mandatory for eg SEM-EDS, PXRD, SCXRD or Raman spectroscopy.

Lab equipment: 

The analysis is performed on an Oxford Xcalibur 2 single crystal diffractometer at bei 40kV and at least 30mA. A micro-diffraction experiment is recorded by slowly rotating the phi axis while xray is on. The results are powder rings for polyrcrystalline sample. For single crystals many frames of different static crystal orientations and exposure times of a few seconds are used.   

The ICDD PDF-4 Minerals database and COD database are used for phase ID.

How To:

After a successfull checkout through our online shop system, you will receive an invoice with our address. Please send the samples to this address. An alternative to our ordering system is to send the samples to our address which allows to find the best working analysis method for your request.

We offer two options for the shipment of the samples:

1st option: You can order your shipment material here and isolate the material with a needle at home in a capsula. 

2nd option: It is also possible to send your sample without any preparation but with a marker indicating the material to isolate and a short note what and how we shall analyse the isolate. Previous results eg. SEM-EDS results should be sent too as they can help while the identification process.

Please choose a shipment method while checking out if you wish to have of your samples returned (+5.00€ for small samples).

Service SXRD Microdiffraction/Lattice Parameters

(EU customers, incl. VAT):

• each data set inclued a diffraction pattern (I vs. 2Theta) a table with corresponding d-values, 2Theta, intesities and match phases.
• PDF data, raw data on request 
• determination of the unit cell and space group (a,b,c; alpha, beta, gamma) from single crystals
• includes VAT, only for EU customers, non EU customers please contact us for your VAT free invoice

price/sample: 55.00€ (+6.20€ photo documentation/sample)