A New Portable XRD/XRF Instrument for Non-destructive Analysis

A new integrated portable apparatus capable of in situ X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) measurements is presented. The instrument equipment is based on a Theta-Theta horizontal goniometer projected and developed in order to optimize stability and reliability for apparatus of such a reduced size and capable of capturing both XRF and XRD information. The simultaneous XRD/XRF data collection is achieved by using a Si solid state detector counting the X-ray photons scattered from the sample as a function of both the energy and the angular step. The instrument is also equipped with a software developed in order to provide both ease of operation in the data collection and a complete and fast characterization of the materials in the data analysis