The nanoFAB is pleased to announce that the new Bruker D8 DISCOVER Plus X-Ray Diffractometer has been successfully installed and is operational now.
The Bruker D8 DISCOVER Plus is a powerful and versatile X-ray diffractometer. It is designed for the structural characterization of the full range of materials from powders, amorphous and polycrystalline materials to epitaxial multi-layered thin films at ambient and non-ambient conditions.
The system features:
- High intensity Cu IµS microfocus X-ray tube
- Integrated MONTEL Plus primary optics for low-divergence X-ray
- ATLAS Goniometer with non-coplanar arm
- EIGER2 R 500K detector with 0D/1D/2D multi-mode operation
- Alignment-free changeable optics, slits, and detector distance
- In-situ heating and electrochemical cell stages
All the above features enable new characterization capabilities that were not available before at nanoFAB:
- 2D scan with wide gamma coverage
- Non-coplanar arm allows for In-plane Diffraction measurements with unrivaled angular range and accuracy, enabling correlative coplanar and non-coplanar XRD analysis available
- The microfocus X-ray tube delivers the highest brightness X-ray source in XRD, making it the ultimate choice for both – line and spot – focus applications, enabling the analysis of extremely small (amount of) samples that was not possible before
- X-Ray Reflectometry (XRR)
- SAXS
- GI-SAXS and GI-WAXS
- Pole figure and residual stress analysis
While our team is in the final commissioning phase of the system before we can open the system for general user work, trial analysis at no cost to users is available now. If you have needs for the advanced XRD/SAXS/GI-SAXS/WAXS analysis mentioned above and are interested in getting some preliminary results, please submit a “sample” request with sample details on LMACS. Our XRD team (Drs. Xuehai Tan and Nas Yousefi) will follow up and arrange test analysis. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Peng Li (Peng.Li@ualberta.ca) – the Characterization Group Manager.
Application Examples
2D Powder Diffraction
- Sample: LaB6 powder
- Techniques: 2D scans with low instrumental broadening and excellent signal to noise ratio
2D Thin Film Diffraction
- Sample: 100 nm Ag film on Si substrate
- Techniques: 2D scans with excellent signal to noise ratio, allowing intensity integration to eliminate the peak from Si substrate
X-Ray Reflectometry
- Sample: SiN/HfO2/SiN/HfO2 ALD film stacks on Silicon substrate (each layer thickness = 20 nm)
- Techniques: XRR determining film thickness nondestructively. The results match the measurement by cross-sectional FIB/TEM analysis very well.
GI-SAXS
- Sample: Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) film
- Techniques: GI-SAXS with microfocus source provides flexibility of (A) measuring low q values without a beam stopper and (B) fast/high-throughput measurement of high q with a central beam stopper
