Research project
Acousto-optic cell for off-line SAXS instrument
- Start date: 4 May 2022
- End date: 3 May 2024
- Value: £300K
- Partners and collaborators: Ken Lewtas, Andy Price, Theresa Roncal-Herrero
- Primary investigator: Professor Megan Povey
- External primary investigator: Ken Lewtas (Lewtas Sci Tech), Andy Price (Lewtas Sci Tech) and Andy Smith (Diamond Light Source)
We have been developing acoustic techniques for crystal nucleation control at Diamond since 2018. SAXS instruments provide the most valuable information regarding ordering in the liquid state and the transformation from liquid to solid states. So far, our instrumentation has been developed with I22 in mind and we intend to continue our studies on I22. In this project we desired to adapt our instrumentation for use on the Leeds-Diamond off-line instrument. A big issue with our experiments on I22 was poor temperature control which is vital for the study of nucleation in crystallising systems; we adapted the Peltier temperature control system which is part of the Xeuss instrument to successfully control temperature in our acousto-optic cell.