Nanosecond resolved X-ray diffraction during pulsed laser annealing of silicon

Abstract

The pulsed nature of the X-rays emitted from the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) was utilized to carry out a diffraction study of the near-surface structure and temperature of silicon following pulsed ruby laser annealing. To our knowledge, this was the first temporal X-ray diffraction investigation of a system at the nanosecond timescale. In this paper we describe experimental details concerning the synchronization of the laser with the X-ray bursts along with a description of the data collection technique and experimental results.