The Role of Development of the Rotating Anode X-ray Generator and the Use of Imaging Plates in Powder Diffractometer Instrumentation

Abstract

The rotating-anode X-ray generator has played a very important role in the instrumentation of X-ray diffraction (XRD), which is a necessary tool in materials science. Such a rotating-anode X-ray generator was developed in 1952 in response to the demands of the community of powder diffraction crystallographers in Japan, whose long history extends to 1912. The rotating-anode generator has been improved with the advance of new technologies and over time has become more reliable and more powerful. This will be true also for the future. At present, an efficient parallel X-ray beam is obtained by combining the rotating-anode X-ray generator with newly developed X-ray optics based on a synthetic multilayer optic. Several applications to the characterization of advanced materials and thin film by XRD are presented. The significance of the use of imaging plate systems, two-dimensional digital detectors, in the X-ray characterization of materials is also given.