Design of a microcomputer-based X-ray diffractometer controller

This work describes the design of an Apple II-based X-ray diffractometer controller capable of acquiring and analyzing X-ray powder diffraction data. The controller's interrupt-drivers hardware includes an on-based scaler for counting X-ray pulses, a closed-loop stepper motor driver for Philips PW 1050 Vertical Goniometer, and circuits for present data collection and safety. ACQUIRE - data acquisition program for the controller coordinates its various devices so that it can perform sample scanning in any of the following modes: continuous, present tome or present count scanning. This program watches over the scanning process and will try to correct any error it detects. Any fault monitored is logged on disk. The collected diffraction data are stored on disk together with its data acquisition parameters and may be transported to another computer. Data analysis is done by ANALYZE a program that operates on the output file generated by ACQUIRE. Its 15 single-keystroke commands permit panning and zooming of the sample's diffractogram, data smoothing, data peak search, peak report generation, and digital plotting. Data smoothing uses a third-degree Savitzky-Golay Convoluting Filter of user defined width. For peak detection, the peak search algorithm examines the diffractograms second derivative for any Gaussian resemblance and checks the peaks' area for statistical significance. The hard copy plot is available from any on-line digital plotted supporting EPSON's Mode D Plotter Commands. (Author). 15 refs. Appendixes p. 85-163