This project will allow the PI and co-PIs to acquire a powerful small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) instrument equipped with a collection of in situ sample stages that will accelerate and enhance a broad range of research activities in priority areas at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) with an impact on advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and bioscience for human health. The new instrument will be incorporated into the existing user facility infrastructure at UT Austin, ensuring its availability to a diverse user base. In particular, the instrument to be acquired substitutes and in some ways exceeds the capabilities of remote facilities, allowing more materials characterization research to be carried out on campus without requiring students to travel. As such, the diverse undergraduate student population of UT Austin, who are very active in research, will be exposed to state-of-the-art X-ray scattering methods as a result of the acquisition.
The PI will acquire a SAXSLAB Ganesha 300XL+ system featuring a high brilliance microfocus X-ray source, scatterless slits, and a high dynamic range Pilatus 300k detector. These specifications will bring to UT Austin the ability to interrogate low-contrast samples such as block copolymers and bio-molecular assemblies; studies that have previously been confined to synchrotron-based investigations. Besides readily exchangeable sample stages for quantitative scattering on solutions, bulk samples, and thin films (including grazing incidence), the instrument features a number of in situ stages to enable investigation of dynamic evolution of mesoscale structures. These capabilities in a user-accessible, campus-based instrument are ideally suited for investigating structural evolution in biological environments, informing design of adaptive materials systems, developing effective materials processing strategies, and diagnosing materials degradation pathways. Currently, researchers at UT Austin fulfill a majority of their need for SAXS by traveling to synchrotron facilities, though none are located nearby. The existing SAXS instrument at UT Austin predates modern advances in bench top X-ray instrumentation from the source to the detector. A modern instrument, well-equipped for both routine and sophisticated in situ experiments, will have an immediate and major impact on research activities at UT Austin.
