Texas State University Acquires Rigaku SCXmini Chemical Crystallography Instrument for Cyber-Enabled Teaching and Research

Rigaku Americas Corporation today announced that the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Texas State University has purchased a Rigaku SCXmini™ benchtop small molecule X-ray diffraction (XRD) crystallography instrument for Cyber-enabled Small Molecule Structure Analysis for Research and Educational Purposes as funded by a Major Research Instrumentation program ( MRI) grant from the National Science Foundation ( NSF).

A Rigaku SCXmini™ X-ray crystallography system was chosen by Prof. Benjamin Martin (Principal Investigator), Prof. Gary Beall (co-PI), Prof. Michael Blanda (Co-PI), and Prof. Debra Feakes (Co-PI) to enhance the X-ray facilities of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in support of education and research at Texas State and a consortium of "cyber-enabled" collaborators from Lamar University, San Antonio College, Texas Lutheran University and Sam Houston State University. The SCXmini™ X-ray diffractometer will be employed to strengthen research endeavors and spark new explorations in areas involving: sulfide and selenide materials, solid state linkage isomerism and ligand substitution in transition metal cyanide complexes, conformational isomers of immobilized calix[6]arenes, polyhedral borane anions, sulfido-bridged iron compounds and magnetostructural studies of Ni(II) dimers, and the preparation of titanium complexes as well as a variety of other research topics.

In a recent interview, Professors Martin and Beall explained that the cyber-enabled collaboration approach will enable a group of Texas institutions (which have high percentages of traditionally underrepresented student populations) to have access to single crystal X-ray diffraction for both teaching and research. Commenting on the purchase from Rigaku's perspective, Tom McNulty, VP Materials Analysis, added that "what excites Rigaku about the SCXmini™, within the context of the collaboration sponsored by Texas State, is the delivery of a broad range of experimental capabilities to a wide variety of users. Rigaku has always envisioned the SCXmini™ playing a key role in the education of undergraduate students and as a walk-up molecular structure tool for graduate students and postdocs."