Beamtimes
This section is a record of beamtimes we've been having - warts and all! For properly analysed data, see the section on published research papers.
The instruments we use include I22 and I11 at Diamond Light Source (Didcot, England), 7T-MPW-SAXS and EDDI at Bessy (Berlin, Germany) and, previously, MPW6.2 at Daresbury Lab (Warrington, England).
This follow-up experiment to our earlier beamtime on this subject allowed us, following improvements to the communication between our instrument and the beamline, to run continuous in-situ sintering experiments without the need for constant manual intervention. The resulting uniform timings make the analysis less error prone. The experiment also allowed us to explore the sintering parameter space more fully and obtain correlated surface roughness (ellipsometry) and film nanostructure (GISAXS) data over a wider range of sintering conditions. [more]
In an experiment at beamline I11 (Diamond Light Source), we have studied the propagation of shock waves induced in a granular ceramic by a series of infra-red laser pulses. An x-ray diffractogram with a millisecond exposure is taken after each pulse and a high-quality composite diffractogram is gradually built up from many pump-probe cycles. [more]
In an experiment at Bessy's Eddi beamline, we used energy-dispersive x-ray diffraction to study strain in thin ceramic films, including buried ones. The samples have been produced during an earlier in-situ GISAXS experiment, and it is expected that the films are under strain due to the shrinkage of the coating during calcination. [more]
In an experiment at Bessy (Berlin), we have combined 2D imaging ellipsometry and grazing-incidence scattering (GISAXS) for the first time to obtain real-space and reciprocal-space data of a surface process. Both techniques were applied simultaneously during heating a sol-gel ceramic coating on a silicon wafer up to 1000C to study compaction and calcination and monitor the roughness of the film both at the nano-scale and macroscopically. [more]
Anomalous SAXS is the technique of choice when it comes to chemically complex multi-phase materials because its chemical contrast allows us to constrain model fits. Unfortunately, chemical shifts of the absorption edge due to ongoing chemical reactions can make ASAXS difficult under in-situ conditions. In this experiment, we investigate how to use the much larger chemical contrast either side of an absorption edge by correcting for the fluorescence background characteristic of scattering patterns taken above an absorption edge. The chosen process is sol-gel dip coating and firing of zirconia and YSZ films. [more]
Blame me, not my employer etc. etc.