Analysis of atomic pair distribution function (PDF) has been widely applied and many wonderful results were obtained. However, studies on organic materials haven’t been practically feasible. The major difficulty is to maintain the molecular geometry during refinement. A method towards the solution and refinement of organic crystal structure are developed. By considering constraints on molecular… Read More Towards solution and refinement of organic crystal structures by fitting to the atomic pair distribution function

A team led by researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Cornell University recently conducted a series of experiments which intimate a strong parental connection between the so called “electron density wave” phase and the “pseudo gap” phase, key components seen as responsible for superconductivity in high temperature superconductors. Led by Séamus Davis, a physicist… Read More Unraveling the cuprates: scientists demonstrate link between key components in high temperature superconductivity

Last month we said goodbye to our favorite postdoc Kirsten Jensen. We are happy to report that she has accepted an Assistant Professorship in the Department of Chemistry at University of Copenhagen where she will be working on the synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials. During her time at Columbia, Kirsten focused on developing and using new thin-film… Read More Kirsten accepts faculty position at University of Copenhagen

Many modern material systems contain heterogeneous mixtures of components, and it is important to be able to characterize the structures of the components in such mixtures. Working with low concentrations is often desirable, either to achieve the proper pharmacokinetic properties of a drug molecule or to prevent particle aggregation and settling. To study structure in… Read More PDF Detects Nanoparticles in Dilute Solutions

Congratulations to Chenyang for successfully defending his thesis!  In the first hour of his defense, which was open to the public, Chenyang delivered a riveting presentation on the structure and lattice dynamics of low-dimensional materials.  During his time with the Billinge group, his research focused primarily on combined atomic pair distribution function and inelastic x-ray scattering techniques to… Read More Chenyang Completes Ph.D

Our recent work on tfPDF has been highlighted on the BNL website! Functional thin films are deposited onto a substrate, often silicon, silicon dioxide, or aluminum oxide. This makes it difficult to study the thin film structure because of the small amount of film material and large amount of substrate. To minimize the scattering of… Read More tfPDF: Thin film PDF

Combining X-ray diffraction and PDF with computed tomography allows for spatially resolved structural analysis, which can help unravel structures in heterogeneous materials and map out the phases present in the system. We recently demonstrated this in a paper on complex structures in batteries, where we were able to map out the components in commercial AAA batteries… Read More X-ray diffraction computed tomography reveals inner structure in batteries

A new cast of fantastic students joins the group this summer: undergraduate students, Justin Calamari and Erica Yee, and PhD student Tim Liu. From developing databases for cataloguing and predicting materials structure-property relationships, to modeling fundamental scattering behavior of X-rays, and complex modeling for structure solution of complex materials, We are excited to have them… Read More New Students Join the Group!