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A high pressure cell for small and wide-angle x-ray diffraction measurements of soft condensed matter samples has been developed, incorporating a fully automated pressure generating network. The system allows both static and pressure jump measurements in the range of 0.1–500 MPa. Pressure jumps can be performed as quickly as 5 ms, both with increasing and decreasing pressures. Pressure is generated by a motorized high pressure pump, and the system is controlled remotely via a graphical user interface to allow operation by a broad user base, many of whom may have little previous experience of high pressure technology. Samples are loaded through a dedicated port allowing the x-ray windows to remain in place throughout an experiment; this facilitates accurate subtraction of background scattering. The system has been designed specifically for use at beamline I22 at the Diamond Light Source, United Kingdom, and has been fully integrated with the I22 beamline control systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report on a novel osmotic cell, developed to simultaneously subject a sample to osmotic stress and measure structural changes by small angle x-ray diffraction. The osmotic cell offers many advantages over more conventional methods of osmotically stressing soft materials to measure their structural response. In particular, a full osmotic analysis can be performed with a single small sample (25 μl). This reduces sample handling and the associated systematic errors, as well as enabling tight control and monitoring of the thermodynamic environment during osmosis, thereby increasing measurement precision. The cell design enables control of osmotic pressure to ±0.04 bar over a pressure range of 1–100 bar, and temperature control to ±0.05 °C. Under these conditions, the lattice spacing in lyotropic structures was resolved to better than ±0.005 Å. Using the osmotic cell, we demonstrate good agreement with previous conventional measurements on the energy of dehydrating the fluid lamellar phase of dioleoylphosphatidylcholine in water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A preface to the "Journal of Renewable & Sustainable Energy" is presented.