N8 HORIZON

Our N8 HORIZON Small and Wide Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAXS - WAXS) system was developed in accordance with the principles of our DAVINCI design: Take the best analytical method and most advanced technologies and combine them with ultimate ease-of-use and safety to offer a perfect solution for all applications. Mirror-conditioned circular pinhole collimation, a versatile, ergonomic sample chamber and a large 2-D detector are the key components that put you in the best starting position for successfully tackling any type of SAXS experiment. Our latest developments in optics technology allowed us to significantly shorten the traditionally long primary beam path and paved the way for our unique vertical instrument design with horizontal sample mounting.
 

The most prominent characteristic of our N8 HORIZON – compared to traditional SAXS systems – is the innovative vertical instrument setup. This simple rotation offers two major benefits: Firstly, no other system with comparable performance
has such a small footprint in valuable lab space. Secondly, gravity is working for you. Samples are easily mounted horizontally with no need for fixing aids. During measurement, samples will never flow, sink or fall out of the X-ray beam.

The VÅNTEC-500 2-D detector with Mikrogap^TM technology satisfies all of the ideal requirements of a dedicated SAXS system. First, no need for gas, water, or routine maintenance and no concerns for intense radiation or movement damage results in detector that is robust and very easy to use. A large active area (14 x 14 cm²) to enable huge angular coverage with full field of view. Incredibly low background and high maximum count rate for fantastic dynamic range and sensitivity to weakly scattering samples. Excellent spatial resolution to resolve closely spaced scattering features. No other detector can offer these combination of ideal features for these applications.  

Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) is a phenomenon caused by particles embedded in a matrix of different electron density. If the particle size ranges from 1 nm to 200 nm, the scattering angle lies within the range of 0° to 5°, depending on the X-ray wavelength used. The smaller the particles are, the wider are the scattering angles.  

Any arrangement of particles in any medium shows a difference in electron density, which results in a specific pattern when executing a SAXS experiment. Along with the size of the particles, SAXS can also determine their shape, their distance apart and size distribution from the 2-D pattern. Particles can be dissolved macromolecules, precipitations in metals, mineral particles in biological tissues, and surfactant micelles.

In contrast to SAXS, Wide Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS) examines structures on the Angstrom level, which are typically interplanar distances of crystalline structures. Often WAXS is used to analyze Bragg the X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern which can help determine crystalline structure, degree of crystallinity, crystallite size, and phase composition (Phase ID). WAXS data is typically collected at the same time (simultaneously) as SAXS data with a 2^nd detector positioned much closer to the sample.