SAXS instrument

Instrument scientists:
Dr Tracey Hanley (Responsible officer)
Dr Robert Knott

Description

A Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) instrument has been installed in the guide hall at OPAL. The SAXS instrument is a Bruker Nanostar equipped with a rotating anode source and three-pinhole collimation. SAXS is complimentary to Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) which will be available on the new QUOKKA instrument at the OPAL reactor. A variety of sample environments are available for solids and liquids, including two temperature control units one covering temperature range -30^oC to 120^oC and a second unit for ambient to 300^oC. The instrument is capable of being run in two separate configurations either high resolution or high flux; the q-range accessible is 0.005 A^-1 to 3.1 A^-1 in high resolution mode and 0.01 A^-1 to 3.1 A^-1 in high flux mode.

Applications

SAXS is used to study any materials with structure of the length scale 1-100nm. The performance of many advanced materials is crucially dependent on nanostructure, and SAXS can be used to study this. It can be used for study of density variations, colloidal sizes, particles sizes, porosity, domain sizes, orientation, phase identification, the list is endless. With research being directed more towards nano-sized science, SAXS is becoming a widely used tool.