Section 7.1.3.1. The detector system

The commonest types of detector for both powder and single-crystal diffractometry are proportional counters and especially scintillation counters (Section 7.1.4). The detector system consists of the detector itself, a high-voltage power supply, a single-channel pulse-height analyser, and a scaling circuit, as shown schematically in Fig. 2.3.3.5 . For position-sensitive detectors (Section 7.1.3.3) and solid-state detectors (Sections 7.1.4.2 and 7.1.5), multichannel analysers are necessary. The X-ray manufacturers and a number of electronic companies provide complete detector systems, often integrated with the computer data-collection system.