Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory are using a new compact furnace with high-energy X-rays to examine materials more quickly and efficiently.

The new furnace uses a technique called high-temperature X-ray diffraction, said Matt Kramer, Ames Lab scientist.

“X-ray diffraction has been used for 70 or 80 years in material characterization,” said Kramer, associate professor of materials science and engineering. “Any material has a characteristic pattern. Scientists use X-ray diffraction to identify constituents in the material.”

Kramer said the furnace is smaller than the standard laboratory tube furnace, measuring 18 inches tall and 6 inches in diameter.

The new system, developed by a team of Ames Lab scientists, can heat material samples to 1,500 C (2,700 F). It is capable of rotating a sample up to 1,000 times per minute.

In most current furnaces, the sample materials sit on a flat plate that does not allow rotation. This can cause large temperature variations in the material. It also sometimes causes the liquid and solid phases of the material to separate, Kramer said.

“When using the old system, you have to go through a long sequence of processes to examine the material,” he said. “The whole advantage of the new system is that we can look at the materials as they are changing in a controlled environment. We know exactly what the temperature is in the whole sample.”

The result is that the scientists can gather data about the materials in just a few days, when it previously took months or years to do the same thing with the old system.

Bill McCallum, senior scientist at Ames Lab, wrote the proposal to get financial backing for the project from the Department of Energy in 1996. McCallum also came up with much of the initial design.

The system was developed primarily by McCallum, adjunct professor of materials science and engineering, Kramer and Alan Goldman, chairman of the department of physics and astronomy. Two graduate students in materials science and engineering, Larry Marguiles and Jason Williams, also assisted in development.

McCallum said the furnace has been in its final form for about a year and a half, but “the project itself is in constant development.” The scientists are now focusing on improving the detector systems in the equipment, allowing them to examine materials even more accurately.

According to a press release, the new high-temperature X-ray diffraction system will be beneficial in examining complex materials such as structural ceramics, superconducting wires and nanostructured materials.

The data gathered by the system may speed the development of new materials for use in electrical distribution systems, microelectronics, aerospace engineering and other fields.