Southern Africa Powder Diffraction Conference and Workshop

This meeting, which is to be one of the first official events of the International Year of Crystallography, 2014, as declared by UNESCO and the IUCr, provides a forum in which the greater Southern African scientific community can get exposure to recent developments in powder diffraction, as presented by internationally recognized leaders. And secondly, an opportunity for the African researchers, to present their own work in these areas to their national and international peers.

Powder diffraction along with its affiliated techniques; have evolved greatly in recent decades. Its domain is no longer primarily limited to qualitative and quantitative analysis of mineralogical and industrial samples, and advances in instrumentation and the development of new methodologies have seen it increasing being used in studies that address contemporary scientific and socially important challenges. Significant fields of activity now include the study of energy and other functional materials, polymorphism, various catalytic systems and mechanistic details of phase changes, gas solid reactions and interactions, using some powder diffraction related technique. The latter including; structure determination, Rietveld refinement, non-ambient studies, as well as total scattering based methods which have extended the reach of powder diffraction to include short range order phenomena, normally associated with amorphous or nano materials. Furthermore, reflectometry, small angle scattering, neutron based methods and electron crystallography, all important to materials science should all be well represented.