Grain size is an important feature that can determine strength, ductility, and toughness. It is widely used to characterize geologic and metallic samples. Interestingly, the underlying mathematics enables snow science to use grain size to determine the bond strength of snow crystals and to predict the likelihood of avalanches....
Read More >>Thin Film XRD
Characterization of thin films can be performed to identify properties including the composition, crystal structure, preferred orientation, and film thickness. The MCL has a few thin-film characterization tools, including the X’Pert XRD (x-ray diffraction) and the Hitachi TM 3030+ SEM (EDS or energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy). The crystal structure...
Read More >>Percent Crystallinity by the XRD Integration Method
X-ray diffraction experiments can be explained by Bragg’s law. The reflected x-rays from long-range crystallographic order planes can be predicted using the following equation. Where n is an integer, λ is the wavelength of the incident x-rays, d is the inter-atomic spacing, and θ is the angle of incidence....
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