Instrument Donation to Boost Clean Energy Research
McCrone Associates Donates X-Ray Diffraction System to University of Illinois at Chicago
WESTMONT, Ill – January 23, 2012 – McCrone Associates, Inc. donated an x-ray diffraction instrument to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to be used to advance clean energy research. McCrone Associates is the analytical services member of The McCrone Group, a materials characterization company.
The instrument, a Siemens D5000 theta-theta x-ray diffractometer, will be installed in the UIC department of civil and materials engineering lab.
Ernesto Indacochea, a professor at UIC, will use the equipment to evaluate the process of producing hydrogen from natural gas. He will also use it to assess the properties of hydrogen nanosensors he is developing for residential fuel cells.
McCrone Associates has a history of contributing equipment to academia. It sent a Riber surface analysis system to North Carolina State, a transmission electron microscope to Northern Illinois University, and a GC/MS system to Benedictine University.
Pharma Workhorse
Dr. Kent Rhodes, senior vice president and technical director at McCrone Associates, said the Siemens x-ray diffraction system was intended for industrial mineral analysis. Over time, the system evolved into a “pharma workhorse,” as it was primarily used to characterize the purity of drugs with its ability to detect different crystalline forms or polymorphs.
Donation of the Siemens instrument was made possible by McCrone Associates’ purchase of a new Rigaku MicroMax-007 XRD. The Rigaku will be used to increase the capacity for analysis of individual particles using XRD.
More information about McCrone Associates XRD analysis capabilities can be found here and using x-ray diffraction to discern the crystalline phases of “micro-powder” here.