A versatile instrument for ambient pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy: The Lund cell approach

Abstract

During the past one and a half decades ambient pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (APXPS) has grown to become a mature technique for the real-time investigation of both solid and liquid surfaces in the presence of a gas or vapour phase. APXPS has been or is being implemented at most major synchrotron radiation facilities and in quite a large number of home laboratories. While most APXPS instruments operate using a standard vacuum chamber as the sample environment, more recently new instruments have been developed which focus on the possibility of custom-designed sample environments with exchangeable ambient pressure cells (AP cells). A particular kind of AP cell solution has been driven by the development of the APXPS instrument for the SPECIES beamline of the MAX IV Laboratory: the solution makes use of a moveable AP cell which for APXPS measurements is docked to the electron energy analyser inside the ultrahigh vacuum instrument. Only the inner volume of the AP cell is filled with gas, while the surrounding vacuum chamber remains under vacuum conditions. The design enables the direct connection of UHV experiments to APXPS experiments, and the swift exchange of AP cells allows different custom-designed sample environments. Moreover, the AP cell design allows the gas-filled inner volume to remain small, which is highly beneficial for experiments in which fast gas exchange is required. Here we report on the design of several AP cells and use a number of cases to exemplify the utility of our approach.