Nanotechnology and Nanoengineered Materials are being developed rapidly for a large number of applications in all kind of sectors and products, e.g. cosmetics, auto tires, building and construction materials, and pharmaceuticals.
Their specific properties related to the small sizes, provide opportunities to develop new technologies with performance and characteristics that cannot be established with conventional materials and technologies. The ability to determine these performance parameters is made possible, in part, through characterization by x-ray diffraction (XRD). From particle size paremeters to phase identification and confirmation, XRD is playing a vital role in this emerging industry.
inXitu’s Cost Effective XRD
inXitu Inc. is a leader in benchtop and portable XRD based instrumentation specializing in developing the technologies required to enable the next generation of scientific instruments used for materials analysis including a recently introduced variant of its popular benchtop instrument, BTX II. The technology used in its portable rock and mineral analyzer received a prestigious R&D 100 award and was chosen to fly on the Mars Science Laboratory rover scheduled for launch in 2011. Now this technology can be found in use in industry with specific application to the novel field of nanoengineered materials.
The powder handling methods can dramatically improve the quality of XRD data while reducing the requirements for sample preparation. inXitu’s patented technique makes possible quality XRD data to be collected regardless of the grain size of the sample. Grain sizes up to 400 um have been tested producing data normally obtained with micron size particles.
Incorporating key technologies from its portable XRD instrument and advanced sample handling techniques, inXitu has developed solutions targeted for identification and analysis in the areas of material analysis, pharmaceuticals, forensics, art and archaeological materials. This new line of instruments offers performance comparable to laboratory XRD systems with the benefit of ease of use, significantly reduced sample preparation and reduced cost of acquisition and operation.