Because lithium-ion batteries have higher energy density than other secondary batteries, it has been possible to make them smaller and lighter. This has enabled them to spread rapidly as power sources for mobile devices such as laptop computers and cellular phones. The demand for lithium-ion batteries keeps growing relentlessly and...
In recent years, pair distribution function (PDF) analysis has been used to characterize material structure in a wide research field. H. Kim reported the reduction mechanism in the reversible hydrogen storage capacity of V1－xTix alloys. B. Li et al., reported the mechanisms of the thermoelectric effect and...
Cement is used as a raw material in the construction of buildings, tunnels, dams, and bridges. Basically, cement consists of clinker, calcium sulfate hydrate as a plaster component, aggregate, and water. The four major components of cement have different characteristics of time for hardening and strengthening of the cement; for...
Cement is used for concrete in construction and architectural structures. Clinker, which is an intermediate material for cement, is produced by mixing and calcinating cement raw materials such as limestone, clay and silica in a rotary kiln at a high temperature. The unreacted calcium oxide remaining after calcination of the...
In the manufacturing process of semiconductor products, thin film inspection methods vary depending on the purpose. For example, optical such as ellipsometers, sheet resistance film thickness meters, step meters, and cross-sectional scanning electron microscopes (SEM) are used for film thickness management. For analysis of composition, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) or...
Structural biology aims to understand life from observation of relevant biological structures and then to extend that knowledge to advance medicine, pharmaceutical development and so on. Because biological systems generally have hierarchical structures, the observation of biological systems varies in size range whether one is looking at tissue level structures...
The modern X-ray diffractometer has drastically changed in performance compared with those from even only 10 years ago. With Hybrid Photon Counting (HPC) detector technology, brighter sources and more intelligent software, modern diffractometers enable higher quality, faster research and open new areas of study possible on smaller and more challenging...
In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for non-liquid nitrogen based cooling systems in thermal analysis because of environmental considerations and usability. Especially in differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), refrigerated cooling unit is often used. Using the Rigaku DSC, low temperature measurements from −90°C can be carried out. This...
The presence of crystallographic texture (preferred orientation) in polycrystalline materials has a significant effect on the anisotropy of the properties of these materials. That means that quantitative description of the orientation distribution of crystallites, or the orientation distribution function (ODF), is an important task for materials characterization and prediction of...
Wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometers have high spectral resolution and can therefore identify peaks with high accuracy. However, if the analysis line overlaps with a higher order line, peak identification and semi-quantitative analysis results may not be reliable. To perform accurate analysis for such cases, measurement conditions that reduce...
Refractory products are materials that can withstand high temperatures, above 1500°C. They are used in a wide range of applications, including as the lining of furnaces that perform melting and heating processing of materials for metallurgical, chemical, ceramic, machine, glass industries and so on. There are many types of refractories...
X-ray computed tomography (CT) is a nondestructive imaging technique that can be used to examine the internal features of an object in three dimensions (3D). The first commercial X-ray CT scanner was introduced 45 years ago and the technique has been widely used in the medical and industrial fields since...
Raman spectrometry is becoming a common method for identification of hazardous compounds and illicit drugs. Historically, infrared absorption spectroscopy was the common method, but the mainstream has gradually shifted to Raman spectroscopy. In particular, Raman spectrometry has a couple of advantages over infrared spectrometry for onsite rapid analysis. First, handheld...
Quantitative phase analysis (QPA) using the X-ray diffraction technique is routinely employed to find weight ratios of individual component phases in a mixture. Techniques for QPA have been widely used not only in research and development but also routinely deployed for quality control of industrial products. Various techniques have been...
