January 1999 Newsletter

Contents

1. Editorial
2. Chairman's Message
3. Industrial Group Forum 12 & 13 April 1999, - Programme
4. Registration Form Industrial Group Forum - 12 & 13 April 1999 Royal Court Hotel, Coventry
5. Annual General Meeting 12 April 1999 Notification
6. Call for nominations - IG Award
7. Residual Stress Workshop 24/9/98 Report
8. 1998 Denver Conference A review
9. Newletter mailing list Save some trees!
10. Autumn Meeting Report
11. Diffraction reaches the parts other medical applications fail to reach
12. Fifth European Conference on Residual Stresses
13. Committee Members and Addresses (1998)

Editorial

As the end of 1998 approaches, the Industrial Group can look back on a ver y successful programme, a Pharmaceutical meeting in March, an excellent Spring Meeting at St Andrews, elevated temperature and stress meetings later in the year, and finally the Autumn meeting. All were well attended, presentations were of a uniformly high quality and the range of subject matter very wide. The forthcoming year presents a different but still exciting scene, with an Industrial Group Forum in April, the detailed programme for which is included in this edition, and then Glasgow in Augus t. A year to look forward to, crystallographically speaking!

The Newsletter has been well received, but production costs are such that I would ask you to take note of the notice inside re electronic copy and the WWW. On a personal note, this will be my last newsletter since I am handing over the reins to Colin Small. I would like to thank the various contributors who have made my job most interesting and the companies who, through their generosity have funded the production during my tenure .

Bruce Fox

Chairman's Message

May I first of all wish our members and readers a very happy Christmas and a good and prosperous New Year.

The latter part of 1998 has seen a successful first with the Residual Stress Workshop held at the Open University in September. Everything I have heard about the meeting suggests that it was very informative and stimulating for learners and old hands alike. The Autumn Meet ing, hosted by Zeneca at Runcorn, continued the IG tradition with an excellent programme in comfortable surroundings. It was particularly good to see the interest shown by delegates in topics from very different fields. More than one person was heard to say, " I really should come to these meetings more often". Congratulations and thanks to the organizers of both events.

In 1999 you should not have so many decisions to make about which meetings to attend. Persuade your manager or mortgage y our diffractometer, but come to the Industrial Crystallography Forum at Coventry in April. The programme is building very nicely and should offer something for everyone interested in industrial crystallography. Most of the Group's activities for the year have been built in, so that you can fit a couple of special interest group meetings along with more general sessions into the two-day package. Since the meeting takes place in a well-appointed hotel, there should also be opportunities to use the swi mming pool and gym, not to mention the bar. Do not forget that this could be your only opportunity to avail yourself of our Group BCA membership scheme, built into the meeting costs. The Committee has not yet reached a final decision on holding an Autumn Meeting this year, so please let us know what you think.

The other major event for the year will be the IUCr Congress at Glasgow in August. You should already have received at least one invitation. For many crystallographers working in UK i ndustry it will represent a unique opportunity to experience state of the art crystallography on a world scale. Powder diffraction and many topics of industrial interest and involvement have been built into the heart of the programme. Your question is not likely to be, 'Is there really anything of interest here for me?' but rather, "How can I possibly hear all that is relevant?" We intend that IG will be represented, particularly by Colin Small's collage of industrial British crystallography.

1999 will be different, and I trust that will mean exciting. I look forward to seeing you at Coventry.

Steve Norval

THE 15TH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

of the Industrial Group of the British Crystallographic Association

will be held at the:

Industrial Crystallography Forum,

The Royal Court Hotel,

Coventry,

12th April 1999.

Nominations are sought fo r 2 committee Members to serve for three years from April 1999.Nominations, which shall be proposed by not less than two members of the Group and shall be accompanied by the written consent of the nominee, shall be sent to reach the Honorary Secretary of the Group not later than seven days before the Annual General Meeting.

The name and address of the Secretary is:

Dr. J. A. Jutson, BICC Cables Ltd, Energy Technology, Wrexham,Wales, LL13 9XP

The 1998 Denver X-ray Conference took place August 3-7 at the Antlers Doubletree Hotel, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In 1951, the University of Denver held a one-day symposium on the use of X-rays and their importance in modern research. From these humble beginnings, the Denver X-ray Conference has grown to provide a leading forum for scientists working in the field of X-ray materials analysis. This 47th conference was organised by an eleven s trong committee and run by ICDD. The conference hosted 389 registered attendees and 275 exhibitors who represented 39 companies. The commercial exhibition, housed in the hotel ballroom, was open 10-5 Mon to Wed and 10-2 Thur. Delegates were drawn to the exhibition for refreshment breaks totalling 3 hours each day. The programme and abstract book ran to over 250 pages and included 13 pages of colour advertisements.

The technical program offered two days of tutorial workshops, followed by thr ee days of invited, contributed and poster presentations on a variety of topics covering both X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) techniques.

Apart from a half-day Plenary Session, there were 4 or 5 parallel sessions from which to choose. In fact out of a total of fourteen workshops you could only attend four and from eighteen oral sessions you only had time for five. This inevitably caused a conflict of interest and it was often difficult to choose from equally compelling sessions. However, sessions did keep to time enabling delegates to flit between presentations. Some sessions were dedicated to topics common to both techniques. One parallel stream always related specifically to XRF and is not detailed in this review.

The ten XRD and joint workshops included: Specimen Preparation; The Design, Alignment, Calibration & Performance Characteristics of the Conventional Diffractometer; Use of Total Pattern Fitting for Quantitative Phase Analysis; Reflectometr y for Surface & Thin-Film Characterisation; Principles & Use of Microdiffraction & Microfluorescence; Conclusions from the Intensity Round Robin; Diffractometer Optics; High Temperature XRD.

The well-prepared handouts given in each workshop will be a useful future reference.

Ron Jenkins (ICDD) introduced the plenary session on Wednesday morning. Two awards were made at the start of this session. The 1998 Birks Award was presented to Dr. Horst Ebel of Technische Univer sität Wien, Austria, recognizing his excellence in the field of X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. Dr. Herb Göbel of Siemens AG, Germany, received the J.D. Hanawalt Award for his important recent contribution to the field of X-ray powder diffraction. Dr. Göbel also presented a lecture on his recognised work entitled "High Temperature Studies with Oven Cameras" at the conference.

The session continued with invited presentations on: X-ray Optics;

Microcalorimeter EDS with 3 eV Energy Resolution;

XRF Detection Limits - How Low Can We Go?

Synchrotron Applications of Powder Diffraction and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy.

Other XRD and joint technical sessions included:

Synchrotron Applications of XRD & XRF; Developments in Detectors for X-ray Analysis;

Recent Advances in X-ray Optics; Recent Developments in Instrumentation & Data Treatment;

Micro XRF/XRD; Residual Stresses; Diffraction Applications ;

Thin Films: Orientation, Stress, Thickness; Innovative Applications of Rietveld Analysis;

Impact of Rietveld Analysis & Use of Calculated Patterns in Quantitative Phase Analysis;

Materials Process Characterization by Diffraction.

Social activities included several evening mixers with excellent buffet food and drink sponsored by various exhibitors. On Sunday, Bede Scientific, Claisse Scientifique, and SPEX CertiPrep sponsored the welcoming reception. On Mond ay the reception was sponsored by Bruker AXS and held in conjunction with the XRF Poster Session. The XRD Poster Session, on Tuesday evening, was held alongside a reception given by Rigaku/USA and MDI with impressive ice sculptured logos as centre pieces. ICDD provided refreshments after its Technical Committee Meeting on Wednesday evening. The social activities culminated with the conference dinner on Thursday evening. Guests were entertained by humorous stories presented by volunteers attending th e conference. A panel of accompanying spouses judged that the prize for best story went to Ron Jenkins.

The conference provided an excellent opportunity to see the latest innovations from all the major equipment suppliers with lots of equipment on display. The wide array of technical presentations running in parallel ensured that there was always something of interest going on. However, the inevitable clashes made it impossible to attend everything of interest. The only answer is a return visit next year. It runs 2-6 August 1999 at Sheraton Steamboat Resort, Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In conclusion, the hotel facilities were superb, the organisation flawless, the atmosphere friendly and the technical content excellent - it certainly exceeded my expectations. I thank Terry Maguire, ICDD for providing information to support this review.

For more details and next year programme visit the Denver Conference web site: www.dxcicdd.com

The proceedings of the Denver X-ray Conference, Advances in X-ray Analysis, Volume 42, will be produced on a CD-ROM by ICDD; the hard copy (book form) will be printed by Plenum.

Dave Taylor

Newsletter Mailing list.

It is important that the Industrial Group maintains an up to date mailing list.

Please let Dave Taylor (address in list of officers) know if you change address, if there is a more appropriate contact in your organis ation or you no longer require a paper copy.

The Newsletter is now posted on our WEB site: (http://gordon.bbk.ac.uk/BCA/IG/ig.htm). We will soon have back issues in place from 1995. Why not have a browse and let me know what you think. As a trial some members (mostly overseas) are now being informed by e-mail when each new edition is mounted.

To reduce costs (almost a pound a copy) we hope to extend this method in future. If you are prepared to switch from a paper copy (and help sa ve the trees) to e-mail notification of the WEB posting, then send an e-mail to:
Dave Taylor [email protected] - with the title WEB NEWS.

Dave Taylor

Fifth European Conference on Residual Stresses

A flyer was distributed with this Newsletter calling for papers for this conference which takes place in Delt-Noordwijkerhout on 28-30 September 1999.

For more inf ormation check the website for this meeting at http://ecrs5.stm.tudelft.nl

Editor