The Academic Research Infrastructure Program will fund a new up-to-date X-ray Diffraction Facility for X-ray structure analysis in the areas of materials synthesis, biochemistry, and inorganic and polymer chemistry. The facility, consisting a dedicated single crystal instrument and a polymers/materials/general diffraction instrument, will provide new capabliities at U. Florida not presently available including: 1) a cooling system for single crystal data collection, 2) a high temperature sample holder for fluid samples, 3) a Charge-Coupled-Device area detector system optimized for single crystal diffraction, 4) a high sensitivity gas filled area detector optimized for diffraction of polymers, fibers, and thin films, 5) a user facility for small angle scattering and a staging area for synchrotron studies, 6) software and hardware for full structure determination of molecules containing up to 350 non-hydrogen atoms. The facility will be employed for the study of non-equilibrium processes in order-disorder alloys, real time crystallization in metals, domaain structures in incommensurate materials; correlating structure to membrane permeability and enzymatic cleavage of small peptides; catalysts for olefin metathesis and polymerization; induced layer ordering in polymer thin films; synthesis of tungsten nitrene complexes; electrohemical synthesis of highly ordered polyheterocycles; synthesis of metallaaromatics and complexes of tropyne and cyclooctatrienyne; study of reversible crosslinks in polymers; determination of structure of new pentanary alloys of semiconductors; study of high-oxidation state organic conductors and superconductors and iorganic extended lattice monolayers in Langmuir-Blodgett films. New X-ray instrumentation, including modern state of the art area detectors and software and hardware for structural determination of complex structures, will be employed in a variety of areas for the study of the structure of new materials, the study of biochemical systems, and the study of a va riety of inoganic and polymer chemistry systems.
