Portable X-Ray Diffraction (pXRD) represents a transformative advancement in field-based mineral characterization.
Geospectra’s pXRD offering, powered by the Fenix XRD, provides organizations with a rapid, accurate, and field-deployable mineralogical capability that directly addresses the operational, financial, and strategic limitations of traditional laboratory workflows.
The Fenix XRD is built on a technology lineage originating from NASA’s Curiosity Rover. Its sealed-vacuum, miniaturized architecture provides exceptional robustness and reliability in remote environments.
Unlike conventional Bragg–Brentano systems, Fenix uses a 2-D CCD detector to capture practical two-theta (2θ) angular range simultaneously.
This:
The ability to identify mineral phases in 5–30 minutes – without external laboratories
– gives exploration and operations teams a structural advantage. Projects gain immediate clarity on geology, enabling rapid vectoring, faster interpretation, and more agile decision-making.
By eliminating multi-week laboratory delays, pXRD reduces reliance on external facilities, lowers sample shipping costs, minimizes downtime, and enables faster drilling optimization. This translates directly into reduced exploration cost per meter and improved allocation of capital during early-stage programs.
High-confidence mineralogy available on-site allows teams to validate geologic models, alteration assemblages, and ore characterization during operations, reducing risk associated with drilling misallocation, premature abandonment, or misinterpretation of mineral systems.
The system’s proprietary powder liquefaction mechanism fully randomizes powder orientation, enabling high-quality diffraction from coarse powders (<150 μm) with minimal preparation and without fine grinding or pellet pressing.
This makes pXRD viable in field camps, mobile labs, or remote drilling operations.
This flexibility maximizes performance across varied geological contexts.
for a 4 kW, lab-based instrument and the Fenix pXRD at varying collection times
Data collection time was also studied to assess the performance of the Geospectra Fenix pXRD analyzers at varying testing times as well as comparison with lab-based XRD.
Diffractograms of one sample using different testing times are shown in Figure 3. Figure 4 and Table 1 summarize the quantitative results at different data collection times and clearly shows consistent results between the two instruments (even at a runtime of 5 minutes).
data quality and data collection time
Geospectra Fenix pXRD analyzers provide the convenience of onsite quantitative mineralogy without the need for complicated sample preparation procedures. To illustrate the quantitative capabilities of Geospectra Fenix pXRD products, comparisons have been made with a large, 4 kW, conventional lab-based XRD instrument (Figure 2).
The results show strong agreement between the lab-based XRD unit and the Geospectra Fenix pXRD system.
Figure 1. Excellent correlation between mineral percentages deduced from XRD traces from a lab-based, 4 kW XRD instrument (x-axis) and the Geospectra Fenix pXRD (y-axis) with 20 minute runtimes. Burkett et al. 2015.*
Operational Readiness Model
Designed for companies seeking immediate capability without capital expenditure.
This model ensures the instrument arrives fully operational, with no learning curve or configuration burden for the end user.
Traditional Ownership
For clients integrating pXRD into long-term analytical infrastructure.
Commercial laboratories typically charge up to $500 per sample, aligning Geospectra’s pricing with established market standards for phase-identification services.
Geospectra’s pXRD platform provides corporations with a high-impact analytical capability that strengthens exploration performance, improves geologic certainty, lowers operational costs, and accelerates key decision points across the project lifecycle. Its combination of field deployability, rapid results, simplified workflows, and custom database integration elevates mineralogical intelligence from a delayed laboratory bottleneck to a real-time operational asset.
This makes pXRD a strategically valuable tool for organizations seeking speed, precision, and competitive advantage in mineral exploration and resource development.
Mining Technologies
