Hairspray works quite well for thin samples (no comment from me as to whether environmentally friendly non-aerosol is as good as aerosol as I haven't tested it yet). Getting a nice even coverage from the sieve can take a bit of practice as well. Together with nail varnish for sealing capillaries visitors to my lab must sometimes think I'm very vain!
Pam From: Peter Y. Zavalij [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: May 8, 2008 12:48 PM To: 'Kurt Leinenweber' Cc: rietveld_l@ill.fr Subject: RE: Preferred orientation? Kurt, An old way used for alloys is: grease the surface of the sample holder (preferably backgroundless) with some sticky stuff and sieve the powder onto it. The particles will fall down and stuck at random orientations, unless they are large plates or needles. Peter Zavalij Director, X-ray Crystallographic Center Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry 091 Chemistry Building University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742-4454 Phone: (301)405-1861 Lab: (301)405-1861 Fax: (301)314-9121 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.chem.umd.edu/facility/xray/ ________________________________ From: Kurt Leinenweber [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 12:37 PM To: rietveld_l@ill.fr Subject: RE: Preferred orientation? Hi all, This thread gives me a chance to ask a question I've had for a long time. I've heard about these large chambers where you can mix your sample with a binder and have it fall out as small powder spheres to avoid preferred orientation in Bragg-Brentano geometry. But, my samples are mostly between 10 and 50 milligrams in size. Does anyone know a way to mount them without preferred orientation? Thank you! - Kurt ________________________________ From: Whitfield, Pamela [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 9:16 AM To: Kurt Leinenweber Subject: RE: Preferred orientation? It's one of the classic needle-shaped materials - it gives lovely SEM images if you can avoid charging From: Kurt Leinenweber [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: May 8, 2008 12:12 PM To: Whitfield, Pamela Subject: RE: Preferred orientation? HI Pamela/all, This sounds intriguing.. why is wollastonite a problem in capillary transmission? Is it needle-like? - Kurt ________________________________ From: Whitfield, Pamela [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 7:55 AM To: rietveld_l@ill.fr Subject: RE: Preferred orientation? I do that myself but it doesn't always help much if you've got something like wollastonite! J From: Martin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: May 8, 2008 10:51 AM To: rietveld_l@ill.fr Subject: RE: Preferred orientation? Forget all that long winded stuff. Just collect the data on capillary transmission geometry and avoid all (well, most of) the fuss. Martin Vickers ________________________________ Get fish-slapping on Messenger! Play Now <http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/msnnkmgl0010000008ukm/direct/01/>
