Landmarks in the Development of Powder Diffraction Instrumentation

• Ron Jenkins ^[1]
  1. [1] International Centre for Diffraction Data

     International Centre for Diffraction Data

     Township of Newtown, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Journal of chemical education, ISSN 0021-9584, Vol. 78, Nº 5, 2001, pág. 601
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Following the discovery of X-rays by Röntgen in 1895, three major fields of materials investigation and analysis developed. Röntgen already demonstrated the first of these--radiography--in his first publication. The second, X-ray emission spectroscopy, has its roots in the 1910s, but was rediscovered as X-ray fluorescence spectrometry in the 1940s. The third technique is X-ray diffractometry. While X-ray powder diffractometry has its roots in the earlier half of the 20th century, it was not until the 1960s that the technique became widely accepted.In the 1920s and 1930s the instruments employed for phase identification were non-focusing cameras. In the mid-1930s, the establishment of a file of reference powder patterns did much to popularize the use of powder diffractometry in industry. The growth in the application of X-ray methods for materials analysis grew rapidly between 1960 and 1970, then made another major leap forward in the early 1970s with the introduction of minicomputers. The usefulness of the technique was further enhanced by the advent of attachments to allow the recording of diffraction data under nonambient conditions. In the 1990s use of synchrotron radiation allowed the use of intense parallel beams of monochromatic X-radiation, providing sensitivity and resolution hitherto undreamed of.This paper reviews the early establishment of X-ray powder diffraction as an analytical technique, and follows the growth of its use in the field of X-ray materials analysis. In addition, it highlights the major milestones in the development of X-ray powder diffraction instrumentation and techniques.