ExMaterial

A desktop workspace for materials-sample records, XRD processing, and thermal-conductivity plots.

简体中文 · GPL-3.0-only · Changelog

What it does

• Creates material families and numbered samples, each with acquisition conditions and notes.
• Stores multi-temperature thermal measurements and calculates thermal conductivity from density, heat capacity, and diffusivity.
• Imports, converts, processes, plots, and compares XRD data in 2θ and d coordinates.
• Drop exported XRD text files onto the main window to create one sample per file in the selected material; original filenames are recorded in sample notes. Drop onto the raw d input to import d coordinates.
• Supports processed-XRD normalization, smoothing, manual peak capture, local Gaussian adjustments, and independent plot viewing.
• Writes every sample's data and generated figures to a local information/ directory.
• Checks stable GitHub releases in the background and supports verified in-app updates for the Windows executable.

Install and run

For a ready-to-run Windows x64 executable, download ExMaterial 1.0.4. See the release notes for all changes. Versions 1.0.2 and later support in-app upgrading; versions 1.0.1 and earlier need one manual upgrade to gain in-app updating. Replace the EXE in your existing application folder and keep the sibling information data directory.

Source users receive manual update instructions instead of an inactive installer button: update a Git checkout with git pull, or download the new source archive if the app was installed from an archive. Background checks report manual updates in the status bar; Help → Check for updates opens the full release notes.

ExMaterial supports Python 3.10 or later on Windows. Create an environment, install the dependency, then start the desktop app:

py -3 -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python .\exmaterial\exmaterial_app.py

The first run creates information/ beside the source folder. This directory holds your experimental records and is intentionally ignored by Git, so it cannot accidentally be published with the open-source code.

Build a Windows executable

python -m pip install ".[build]"
.\exmaterial\build_windows.bat

The executable is written to exmaterial\ExMaterial.exe. Keep the information/ directory beside the exmaterial/ directory when moving an existing workspace.

Data model

information/
└── <material name>/
    ├── samples.json
    └── #<sample number>/
        ├── xrd_data.csv
        ├── xrd_2theta.jpg
        ├── xrd_d.jpg
        ├── processed_xrd_*.csv / *.jpg
        ├── manual_xrd_peaks.json
        └── thermal_conductivity_temperature.jpg

See the Chinese user manual for detailed workflow instructions and units.

License

ExMaterial is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 only (GPL-3.0-only). You may use and modify it; redistributed modified versions must remain GPLv3 and provide their corresponding source code. See LICENSE.

Contributing

Bug reports, documentation improvements, and focused pull requests are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md first.