Over the past two decades, position sensitive detectors (PSDs) have found increasing use in many fields of X-ray powder diffractometry. Their great potential has been demonstrated not only for time- and temperature-resolved powder diffraction studies but also for applications ranging from conventional structure characterisation to pole figures measurement. In most cases, one takes advantage of the significant reduction of the acquisition time resulting from the ability of PSDs to simultaneously record a much larger region of the pattern than conventional counters.
One important issue concerning PSDs is data quality. Data quality not only depends on the detector specifications (linearity, uniformity of response, spatial resolution, stability...) but also on combined effects of the detector and the geometry of the used set-up. In the present work, this point is illustrated within the framework of the study of thin epitaxial layer systems, which represents a new field of application of PSD. We first present a versatile homemade set-up which is particularly well suited to the study of thin epitaxial layers. It is based on a rotating anode generator, a four bounce (220) Ge monochromator and a curved position sensitive detector (INEL CPS120). We then describe how PSDs can be advantageously used to allow fast reciprocal space mapping, which is especially interesting when analysing poor crystalline and defective layers as usually observed with oxides and ceramics films. We finally present some aspects of the quality of data collected with this instrument. In particular the effects of PSD on peak position and intensity precision, instrument resolution and corrections that must be applied to raw data are discussed.

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1. Investigation of strain and strain relaxation in functional epitaxial oxides using X-ray scattering techniques