pyFAI is an open-source software package designed to perform azimuthal integration and, correspondingly, two-dimensional regrouping on area-detector frames for small-and wide-angle X-ray scattering experiments. It is written in Python (with binary submodules for improved performance), a language widely accepted and used by the scientific community today, which enables users to easily incorporate the pyFAI library into their processing pipeline. This article focuses on recent work, especially the ease of calibration, its accuracy and the execution speed for integration.

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The XPAD3S-CdTe, a CdTe photon-counting pixel array detector, has been used to measure the energy and the intensity of the white-beam diffraction from a lysozyme crystal. A method was developed to calibrate the detector in terms of energy, allowing incident photon energy measurement to high resolution (approximately 140 eV), opening up new possibilities in energy-resolved X-ray diffraction. In order to demonstrate this, Laue diffraction experiments were performed on the bending-magnet beamline METROLOGIE at Synchrotron SOLEIL. The X-ray energy spectra of diffracted spots were deduced from the indexed Laue patterns collected with an imaging-plate detector and then measured with both the XPAD3S-CdTe and the XPAD3S-Si, a silicon photon-counting pixel array detector. The predicted and measured energy of selected diffraction spots are in good agreement, demonstrating the reliability of the calibration method. These results open up the way to direct unit-cell parameter determination and the measurement of high-quality Laue data even at low resolution. Based on the success of these measurements, potential applications in X-ray diffraction opened up by this type of technology are discussed.

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Microsecond (μs) time-resolved extended X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (EXAFS) has been developed using an energy-dispersive EXAFS (EDE) setup equipped with a silicon Quantum Detector ULTRA. The feasibility was investigated with a prototypical thermally driven redox reaction, the thermal decomposition of (NH4)2[PtCl6]. EXAFS data were collected with snapshots every 60 μs during the course of the thermolysis reaction, then averaged for 100 times along the reaction to get better signal to noise ratio which reduces the time resolution to 6 millisecond (ms). Our results provide direct structural evidence of cis-PtCl2(NH3)2 as the intermediate, together with continuous electronic and geometric structure dynamics of the reactant, intermediate and final product during the course of the thermolysis of (NH4)2[PtCl6]. The thermal effect on EXAFS signals at high temperatures is considered in the data analysis, which is essential to follow the reaction process correctly. This method could also be applied to other reaction dynamics.