ちなみに、今年は久しぶりに Los Alamos National Laboratory にも行く予定です。韓国の HANARO やインドネシアの BATAN にも。いやはや、中性子を求めて世界を彷徨っています。。。
Long time no see! I am presently at ORNL, running three experiments in 1.5 weeks. Pretty hard and tough, but exciting data are being taken, i.e., a lot of funs now! Without neutrons, I am just a dead man. I will fly back to US again later in this year, to LANL. Also planned to visit HANARO and BATAN. Wandering all around for neutrons…
Traveling around: 9/18-21 JPS meeting at Yokohama, 9/25 meeting at Tokyo, 9/25-30 ESS TAP meeting in Sweden, 10/2-4 Nikko International Workshops. Too much travel, I need to do research! Let me research!
ちなみに研究室 homepage の equipment に status webcam を link しておきました。
The new GES Bridgman furnace is about to GO!
Temperature gradient is measured under vacuum atmosphere by inserting quarts tubed termocouple from the top flange. As shown above the largest gradient is 76C/cm, which is pretty satisfactorily. The temperature stability was an issue in the beginning, fluctuating 5C somehow, but it was improved by changing controlling frequency. The highest temperature check under vacuum (1100C) was also successfully done. One note is that the real temperature at the center of the furnace is slightly (approx 20C) higher than the reading temperature of the temperature controller. Next is to measure the temperature gradient in the air atmosphere, with checking real highest temperature.
There are pretty many things happened in my X-ray lab, but finally X-ray generator is back online with 45kv/100mA. Just now, it has increased to 50/100. We will go higher next week, as the spec says it can go up to 60/300.
For the diffractometer side, we first checked the powder diffraction patterns of several standard samples, such as Si, Al2O3, and so on. Of course, this is the 4 circle diffractometer, and thus the powder pattern taken here is not looking-so-good, but anyway the 2theta movement is confirmed to be solid, reliable, and reproducible. As a practice of using Fullprof, we have just Rietveld-analyzed the obtained Al2O3 data, which give reasonable lattice parameters, fractional coordinates, etc. Happy!
Next, we get to align the diffractometer using single crystal standard, and then reset up the refrigerator. Long way to go? Not at all!