Bruker AXS GmbH - Nanostar

The materials scientists and engineers of today are able to understand and influence the properties of materials on a nanoscale level. Exciting new materials such as designer polymers and bioceramics are being made, and continuing advances with materials such as liquid crystals, metal-organic and thin film coatings are made possible by investigating and altering their nanostructures. A reliable, economic and non-destructive method for analyzing nanostructured materials is SAXS (Small-Angle X-ray Scattering). SAXS yields information such as particle sizes and size distributions from 1 to 100 nm, shape and orientation distributions in liquid, powders and bulk samples.

The Bruker AXS NANOSTAR, with its intense, collimated primary beam and 2-dimensional detector, has a similar design to a synchrotron SAXS beamline. With a 2-dimensional detector, the misinterpretation of data due to a 0-D or 1-D data collection method is avoided, eliminating the need for restrictive initial assumptions about the sample. In fact, the NANOSTAR analyzes pure sample properties, even if the sample particles are asymmetric or show preferred orientation. Additionally, a real space image with µm SAXS resolution of the sample can be taken by performing Nanography.

The NANOSTAR features a brilliant x-ray source, combined with innovative multi-layer optics, which provides an intense, point-like incident beam upon the sample. Also included is the HI-STAR detector, a virtually noise-free, real-time 2-d detector with photon counting ability.