Back from Wrocław, where we marked 10 years since the Rigaku and Oxford Diffraction merger with team reflections, product milestones, and a gathering at a historic venue.
I’ve just returned from a special event: the 10th anniversary celebration of the merger between the Rigaku Single Crystal and Oxford Diffraction Groups, held in Wrocław, Poland. It’s hard to believe it’s been a full decade since we came together. In that time, we’ve launched the XtaLAB Synergy and Synergy-ED product lines, integrated HyPix detectors, and introduced a new version of CrysAlisPro each year—milestones that reflect a decade of growth and innovation.
The celebration took place at a beautiful castle just outside the city, with staff and their families in attendance. After a series of presentations from senior team members, the event transitioned into an afternoon of great food and fun activities for the kids.
Mathias Meyer, Dr. Kiyoshi Ogata and Adrian Jones starting the 10th Anniversary Celebration with the Rigaku Polska team
As this note reaches you, a busy and exciting summer is approaching. The Canadian Chemical Crystallography Workshop, the Polish Crystallographic Meeting, the ACA Summer Course, and The Protein Society Annual Symposium are all just around the corner. We hope to see many of you at one of these events.
This month, we’re placing a spotlight on the Intelligent Optics Module, which offers complete remote alignment capabilities for rotating anode sources—an important advance in usability and control. Chris Schürmann also shares a helpful tip on how to generate unwarped views of reciprocal space, and Jeanette provides a thoughtful review of Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation. (Admittedly, I was a little surprised no one mentioned that there was no review last month!)
To wrap up, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to respond to a short survey. We’re looking to improve how we deliver the Tip of the Month and would value your input on what format works best for you.
In this session, we demonstrate the use of micro-ED to study the structural evolution of sodium-ion battery cathode materials for next-generation inexpensive batteries. During charge and discharge, sodium-ion cathodes undergo numerous phase transitions to accommodate sodium ions being removed and added. This crystal structure evolution controls the voltage, usable capacity, and long-term stability of the battery. Subtle superstructures driven by sodium-vacancy ordering and Jahn-Teller effects are especially important, but very difficult to detect with powder X-ray diffraction. We demonstrate the utility of electron micro-ED to determine these structures. Single crystal electron diffraction patterns are collected on individual particles of battery-grade cathode materials, and used to solve sodium-vacancy orderings that were previously unsolved, helping to better understand the performance bottlenecks of sodium-ion battery cathodes. Join us to see how ED is transforming research, register now!
The RSfPC is a course aimed at newcomers to crystallography and focuses on the practical aspects of crystallography with 10 lectures covering approx 10 hours and a course exam at the end.
The Rigaku School for Practical Crystallography was created during the pandemic to help fill the gap left by the cancellation of many regional crystallographic teaching schools. Thanks to the positive response over the past four years, it has continued to grow. Now offered on-demand, the course aims to make learning more accessible by overcoming time-zone challenges and reaching a wider audience.
We’re excited to welcome new students to the Rigaku School for Practical Crystallography.
Our LinkedIn groupshares information and fosters discussion about X-ray crystallography and SAXS topics. Connect with other research groups and receive updates on how they use these techniques in their own laboratories. You can also catch up on the latest newsletter or Rigaku Journal issue. We also hope that you will share information about your own research and laboratory groups.
Atrigakuxrayforum.comyou can find discussions about software, general crystallography issues and more. It’s also the place to download the latest version of Rigaku Oxford Diffraction’sCrysAlisProsoftware for single crystal data processing.
Achieve peak source performance any time with Intelligent Optics Module (iOM) automated alignment
Automatic beam alignment for consistent performance, the XtaLAB Synergy-DW VHF can now be equipped with our new IOM device for fully motorized automatic beam alignment. With encoders on every axis, iOM puts the beam exactly where you need it with high reproducibility, perfect for the smaller samples commonly studied today. iOM also lets you achieve maximum intensity from your source by automatically maximizing the intensity so you can achieve peak performance at all times.
Intelligent Optics Module (iOM) Overview:
Proven reliability
With automatic alignment, your source can maintain peak performance all the time. Perfect alignment can be achieved within a few minutes to keep your system ready for the smallest and most challenging samples.
Precision Engineering
Reproducibility
The iOM device has been designed with encoders on each motor to ensure it knows its exact position. When aligning the beam, this enables the best position to be automatically found and remembered so optimal alignment can be easily recovered.
Safety
Manual alignment of X-ray sources often requires direct access to knobs and screws inside the radiation safety enclosure. This represents a risk of exposure to X-ray radiation and thus is often left to service engineers to perform. The iOM device allows fully remote alignment of the X-ray optic while the X-ray safety enclosure is safely interlocked.
Simplicity
X-ray source alignment has never been easier with the iOM device attached to your source. The X-ray optic can be aligned either using manual point and click to point the beam at the sample or automatic alignment for maximum intensity in just a few minutes.
More independence
The iOM gives unprecedented control over the optic position, all controlled via a software interface. This means that service engineers no longer need to be present on-site to accomplish full optic alignment. Either use our automatic routine or adjust the alignment yourself with an easy-to-use, intuitive software interface. Still not confident? Our service engineers can step in and perform alignment and source diagnostics over the internet, minimizing your service costs.
Rigaku offers a crystal structure determination service with scientific support, with data collection on a XtaLAB Synergy-ED diffractometer in Rigaku's own laboratories.
Access our electron diffraction service delivering all structural information, datasets, raw data files and software to re-process at your own leisure. Electron diffraction can be carried out on samples with crystallites under 1 micron in size, meaning that crystallization trials for traditional X-ray analysis no longer have to become a bottle neck to structural analysis.
While not crystallography, a group of over 100 scientists from 11 countries have used in situ diffraction at the EuXFEL to determine a structural model for liquid carbon.
June 12, 2025
Researchers from the US have synthesized and characterized Li2Co3(SeO3)4, which crystallizes in space group P21/c, yet differentially absorbs circularly polarized light through interference between linear dichroism and linear birefringence.
Robyn Arianrhod’s Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation—as the title might suggest—is a deep dive into vectors and tensors. These mathematical tools are the foundation of modern physics, namely Einstein’s work on relativity.
Einstein’s theories of special relativity and general relativity get a lot of attention. They’ve made him one of the most famous and well-known scientists of the 20th century. Arianrhod treats these theories like the ultimate climax in the trajectory of modern physics and then dials it back—all the way to early human civilization and our most fundamental understanding of mathematics and how to communicate numerical relationships with symbols. She revisits Newton and Leibniz and the creation of calculus. She dives into Michael Faraday’s and James Clerk Maxwell’s studies of electromagnetism and their implications for the greater field of physics. Arianrhod does an amazing job of presenting each prominent physics figure’s work within the greater context of their life, providing biographical context and anecdotes to round out their historical character.
One of Isaac Newton’s most famous quotes is “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Arianrhod illustrates this fully within the context of vectors—showing the reader the “Giants” Newton relied on to make his discoveries, as well as the impact of Newton’s discoveries on subsequent generations of physicists, up to Einstein and beyond.
Arianrhod’s passion for the subject and for sharing that passion with others through teaching is clear from her energetic and engaging prose and detailed diagrammatic explanations of mathematical concepts. Vector is clearly written with a particular audience in mind—namely those who already have an interest in mathematics and want to learn more. Not many casual readers are going to pick up a book called Vector—though perhaps they should.
