In X-ray powder diffraction analysis, obtaining high resolution and high intensity diffraction data leads to the improved accuracy of analyses based on that data, such as qualitative and quantitative analysis of minor phases, crystallite size and strain analysis, lattice constants refinement and so on. Powder structure analysis has received a lot of attention in recent years. Powder structure analysis requires high-resolution, highintensity data: accurate diffraction angles are needed for the determination of lattice parameters and accurate integrated intensity for each diffraction peak needs to be evaluated for the structure determination.
However, there is always a trade-off between resolution and intensity. Using older optical systems, it has generally taken quite a long time to collect high resolution, high intensity measurement data.
CALSA (Crystal Array on Logarithmic Spiral Analyzer), the high resolution spiral analyzer introduced here, is able to obtain very high resolution data using the Cu Kα₁ emission line, and gets an intensity ten times higher than conventional optics with the same angular resolution.