Mangaluru: An advanced X-Ray diffraction facility has been set up at the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK), Surathkal, Mangalore.
The equipment is Empyrean III, from Malvern Panalytical Netherlands. The Empyrean III, the instrument has a basic platform for the characterization of materials, such as metals and alloys, clay minerals, geological rock samples, powders, thin films, Nano-materials and nanoparticles dispersed in liquid media for different applications, such as scientific, industrial, academic and research fields. The facility includes different types of sample holders, like zero background holder (for small quantity sample), rectangular sample holder, spinning sample holder, capillary liquid holder, and High-temperature sample holder. For analysis of diffraction data Xpert Highscore plus software with ICDD PDF-2 2020 database with features, 311,500+ entries for rapid and accurate phase identification is also available.
The diffraction measurements include:
- Crystal structure determination.
- Phase identification
- Quantification
- Contaminant detection
- Grazing incidence X-ray (GIXD)
- Small and Wide-Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAX and WAXS)
- Micro-X-ray diffraction
- High-Temperature X-ray Diffraction, up 1400 °C
The facility was inaugurated by NITK Director on 23/12/2019 and is now available for public use.