Earth & Planetary Sciences X-Ray Diffraction Laboratory

The X-Ray Diffraction laboratory is a user-operated service center laboratory available to any qualified UNM faculty, staff, graduate or upper division undergraduate students for sponsored research projects. The lab has existed since the early 1970s and has been in continous operation as a multi-user service center facility for almost fifteen years.

The laboratory is primarily a powder diffraction facility enabling the identification and structural characterization of crystalline phases in fine powders including fine-grained natural rock and mineral specimens as well as engineered and synthesized materials.

In the links above, "About our Lab" describes the facility in some detail. "Using the Lab" describes what prospective users must do to qualify as laboratory users, "XRD Resources" are a page of links to useful information about X-Ray Powder Diffraction (both on this site and on the Worldwide Web), and "XRD Course Info" contains information about an Introductory Course in X-Ray Powder Diffraction along with a library of tutorial information available to those registered for the course (with most available to the general public as well).

We invite you to explore our pages and make use of them. If you find anything amiss or needing correction, please send your feedback to the XRD Lab manager at the Email address listed below.

Location: Room B-25, Northrop Hall,
200 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87131
Lab Phone: (505) 277-6530

Lab Manager: Jim Connolly. Office: Northrop Hall Rm. 108 (Across from Main Office).
Phone: (505) 277-9447, FAX: (505) 277-8843, Email: connolly@unm.edu

Faculty Supervisor: Adrian Brearley. Office: Northrop Hall Rm 206. Phone: (505) 277-4163, Email: brearley@unm.edu

These X-Ray Diffraction pages are designed to be a resource for current and potential users of the X-ray powder diffraction laboratory at in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico. They are eternally under construction. Latest updates 18-Jul-2011.

Lab Status: The Scintag Diffractometer is:

UP!!

Status as of 4:00 pm on 5-Jan-2012: Our new Rigaku Systems are scheduled to be installed starting the week of January 15 and continuing until both the SmartLab and Rapid II systems are up and running. If all goes well we expect the installations to be completed by then end of January. Precise timing is dependent on electrical renovations being completed in time so there might be some delay. We will attempt to keep this page updated with the latest news.

We expect to keep access open to the Scintag XRD while our new Rigaku systems are being installed.  There clearly will be exceptions to this with all of the work going on. We will try to schedule outage times on the lab calendar if these are known. 

The Scintag XRD system appears to be working well in its new home (about 15 inches west of its former location) The computer that operates the Scintag is now located on the desk just to the left of the system, and the analytical system (EPSXRD3) is located next to that.  The older system and printer are on a table, and will likely have to be moved out temporarily during Rigaku installation.

We have returned to resetting operating filament current on the Scintag to 10 ma after use as long as nobody is scheduled to use the instrument for the balance of the day. Please check the lab calendar when your run is completed to see if somebody is coming in after you and adjust (or not) accordingly.  

Please report any unusual system behavior to me in person or via Email (to connolly@unm.edu).

Please monitor this page (http://epswww.unm.edu/xrd) for status updates.

Our alignment efforts of April 2-5, 2011 have resulted in much more accurate angular positions for the goniometer. We still have a slight amount of sample height error (resulting is slight deviations of 2-theta between 45 and 90 degrees) that we plan to correct soon. Overall, it is much better than it was before we started.

The old chiller has been retired to inactive status (for possible future repair) and replaced by another slightly newer Haskris chiller that is working fine. We have turned it around so the exhaust faces the outdoor vent. The controls are at the back, but don't need to be adjusted and the auxiliary pressure and temperature gauges can be easily read from the room and the hot air is now going in the right direction.

Jade 9.1 has been installed on both systems, and the ICDD database updated to the most recent (September, 2010) version of the PDF4. 2011 Release 1 of the ICSD Database has been installed on both systems and integrated into Jade 9.1. Jade 9 includes some nice enhancements in the data visualization area and includes two varieties of Search/Match -- the conventional pattern comparison algorithms, plus a new whole pattern least-squares fitting algorithm. Users are encouraged to try both methods and see what works best with your data. We have had some luck in whole pattern fitting for fairly simple 2 and 3 phase mixtures. As with everything, it isn't perfect but it is another tool in the toolbox. Please note that if you have any custom Search/Match "UserFiles" created for your work, you will need to reconstruct them using the newest version of the ICDD database before they will be fully functional (i.e., allow detailed card data to be displayed, etc.) with the updated databases.

Other past items of note:

  • Because of recent scheduling conflicts that have arisen, I have created an "Official" XRD Laboratory Scheduling Policy to be followed by all users. This policy is designed to allow users to schedule time on the system and have that policy be respected by other users. Please read it (by clicking on the link) and heed what it says. Failure to do so will result in a warning, and continued failures to do so will result in suspension or termination of laboratory privileges.

Yahoo Calendar: In the interest of convenience to our all-over-campus users, we are now using an onlne calendar for scheduling lab time. All current users should have received information about how to log in and access the calendar for "epsxrdlab" located Yahoo calendars at http://calendar.yahoo.com. See or Email to Jim Connolly (connolly@unm.edu) if you need the access password. The "read-only" version at http://calendar.yahoo.com/epsxrdlab may be consulted to see what times are available without logging in. There are shortcuts on the desktop of all lab computers to access the calendar. We also have an online Adobe Acrobat document which explains in some detail how to effectively use the calendar. This online calendar is the authoritative calendar for lab scheduling. The paper calendar in the lab is for reference only.

As always, users are asked to send Email feedback to the Lab Manager with any comments.

Please direct comments and suggestions about these pages and the X-Ray Diffraction Laboratory to Jim Connolly, Lab Manager.