Application of high temperature x-ray diffraction as a tool for material characterization and product optimization

X-ray Diffraction (XRD) combined with insitu high temperature experiments is a powerful tool for the characterisation of structural parameters of industrial materials. New instrumental developments such as flexible diffracting geometries, high temperature XRD chambers with homogeneous temperature distribution and parallel beam optics provide better application to a wide range of specimen. In addition to the qualitative identification of crystalline phases, XRD patterns contain additional information about crystalline size distribution, texture, lattice parameters and residual stress. With the high temperature XRD equipment unique information for example temperature-dependent phase transformations, thermal changes of structural parameters and changes of the real structure parameters is obtained. The aim of this study was to describe the setup and calibration procedure of a modern high temperature X-ray Diffraction system equipped with parallel beam optics as well as the measurement and evaluation of high temperature data. This procedure is aimed to industrial research on thin film hard coatings and modern XRD analysis capabilities in respect to regular quality control and industrial research are shown. (nevyjel)