A NEW POWDER DIFFRACTION METHOD FOR LINEAR DETECTORS

In this article we describe a new type of powder diffractometer that gives a significant improvement in count rate over existing methods. The key to the new technique is the use of a flat, diffracted beam monochromator in combination with a position sensitive detector. The incident x rays fall on a flat plate or capillary sample and multiple diffraction lines are reflected by the monochromator out of the equatorial plane onto a position sensitive detector. Since the monochromator is tuned for the incident beam energy, background from fluorescence or other scattering is eliminated and data can be recorded over a range of several degrees thereby providing a large improvement in counting efficiency over conventional diffractometers. This new method is also compared to a previous article which employed a focusing analyzer crystal and position sensitive detector.