Seminars Archive

Applications of powder diffraction for the characterization of materials

Abstract
X-ray Powder Diffraction (XPD) is a powerful, non-destructive tool for the characterization of materials. As a large amount of information is contained in the powder diffraction patterns, the technique is being used with different scopes in various fields ranging from the pharmaceutical industry to airplane manufacturers. In this seminar various applications of powder diffraction for material characterization are treated and results of recent experiments are shown. As an application in cultural heritage research the identification of degradation products in stained glass windows of the basilica dei santi Giovanni e Paolo is shown. Furthermore, the identification of polymorphs of pharmaceuticals and a method to find small traces of polymorphic contaminations are demonstrated. The structural characterization of mixed rare-earth oxides (Ce1-xGdx)O2-x/2 is presented as well as a device to study structural transitions at high temperatures. Finally, the effect of inducing residual stress to improve the strength of open-hole thin aluminum specimens by laser shock peening is illustrated.