Developments in detector technology have propelled powder X-ray diffraction into the front rank both as an analytical tool for industrial laboratories and as a process control tool
Three years on from its introduction, Panalytical says its high-speed X'Celerator detector has proven its effectiveness in countless application areas and now has an installed base rapidly approaching the one thousand mark.
A revolutionary approach when it was introduced, the X'Celerator's real time multiple strip (RTMS) technology excited the world of X-ray powder diffractometry by providing up to a 100-fold increase in acquisition speed compared with other detectors available at that time.
In addition, this new technology created the possibility of collecting powder diffraction data approaching a quality only attainable in the past with synchrotron X-ray sources.
Today, the X'Celerator continues to lead the field in high-speed data acquisition, says Panalytical.
An important factor contributing to this is Panalytical's success in translating its RTMS technology from prototype to full-scale production.
Also the solid-state technology of this device, allowing reliable, maintenance-free operation, has proven its worth over the past years.
Panalytical is continuing the X'Celerator story with the introduction of dedicated X'Celerator accessories designed to enhance its performance still further.
This includes special programmable slits to maintain optimum sample irradiation and hence correct peak intensities over the full range of incident angles.
Recently, Panalytical has also introduced a new range of focusing mirrors for the X'Celerator that create, instead of a parallel beam, a convergent beam that focuses on the detector.
This brings considerable advantages when measuring samples in transmission geometry, such as powder samples in glass capillaries or on thin foils.
These developments have helped put powder XRD firmly on the map as an analytical tool, with laboratories and industries throughout the world now recognising its power in solving a large variety of analytical problems and in revealing structural details that were previously impossible to observe.
In the pharmaceutical industry, for example, the hunt for polymorphs (chemically identical substances in different crystallographic forms) is a crucial phase in new drug development.
Not only the big pharmaceutical companies but also hundreds of generics companies use powder XRD to hunt for undiscovered polymorphs of valuable drugs or to characterise alternative forms of registered drugs the patents of which are about to expire.
The most important advantage of the X'Celerator detector in polymorph hunting is not just its speed but also the lower limit of detection it provides for minority phases.
With the introduction of the X'Celerator this has decreased to almost 0.1%, or about a factor of ten better than previously attainable.
In the building materials industry, the quantitative analysis of clinker and cement is complicated by the fact that the mixture of phases present produces an X-ray diffractogram with a lot of overlapping peaks. These are analysed using an advanced technique known as Rietveld analysis that requires the full diffraction pattern to be recorded instead of only a few intensities.
The use of the X'Celerator is invaluable in this analysis as it allows the complete diffraction pattern to be finished in just a few minutes.
Combined with the enormous increases in computing power available today, the high acquisition speed of the X'Celerator has helped to turn this method into a truly useful and robust analytical tool that runs completely automatically without operator intervention.
Effectively, a push-button operation.
Panalytical's developments in detector technology have propelled powder XRD into the front rank both as an analytical tool for industrial laboratories and as a process control tool.
Allied to this, the company's software developments have contributed to making the operation of a diffractometer and executing complicated tasks such as phase identification easier than ever, freeing powder XRD from the domain of the specialist, and turning it into a truly user-friendly technique that can also be used by less expert operators.
