Why X-ray diffraction systems ?
X-ray diffraction (XRD) is an analytical technique looking at X-ray scattering from crystalline
materials. Each material produces a unique X-ray "fingerprint" of X-ray intensity versus scattering angle
that is characteristic of it's crystalline atomic structure. Qualitative analysis is possible by comparing the
XRD pattern of an unknown material to a library of known patterns.
What X-ray diffraction systems ?
About 95% of all solid materials can be described as crystalline. When X-rays interact with a
crystalline substance (phase), one gets a diffraction pattern. The X-ray diffraction pattern of a pure
substance is, therefore, like a fingerprint of the substance. The powder diffraction method is thus ideally
suited for characterization and identification of polycrystalline phases.
Today about 50,000 inorganic and 25,000 organic single component, crystalline phases, diffraction
patterns have been collected and stored on magnetic or optical media as standards. The main use of
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powder diffraction is to identify components in a sample by a search/match procedure. Furthermore, the
areas under the peak are related to the amount of each phase present in the sample
