Diamond Beamline Research Articles

Pioneering remote-access use of Diamond beamline I19

Pioneering remote-access use of Diamond beamline I19

Diamond beamline I07: a beamline for surface andinterface diffraction.

Beamline I07 at Diamond Light Source is dedicated to the study of the structure of surfaces and interfaces for a wide range of sample types, from soft matter to ultrahigh vacuum. The beamline operates in the energy range 8-30 keV and has two endstations. The first houses a 2+3 diffractometer, which acts as a versatile platform for grazing-incidence techniques including surface X-ray diffraction, grazing-incidence small- (and wide-) angle X-ray scattering, X-ray reflectivity and grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction. A method for deflecting the X-rays (a double-crystal deflector) has been designed and incorporated into this endstation, extending the surfaces that can be studied to include structures formed on liquid surfaces or at liquid-liquid interfaces. The second experimental hutch contains a similar diffractometer with a large environmental chamber mounted on it, dedicated to in situ ultrahigh-vacuum studies. It houses a range of complementary surface science equipment including a scanning tunnelling microscope, low-energy electron diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy ensuring that correlations between the different techniques can be performed on the same sample, in the same chamber. This endstation allows accurate determination of well ordered structures, measurement of growth behaviour during molecular beam epitaxy and has also been used to measure coherent X-ray diffraction from nanoparticles during alloying.

Coherent imaging at the Diamond beamline I13

AbstractThe Diamond beamline I13 for imaging and coherence applications is dedicated to hard X‐ray imaging on the micro and nano‐lengthscale. Two independent stations will be operated in a separate building at a distance of 250 m from the source. The imaging branch will perform in‐line phase contrast imaging and tomography over a large field of view in the 6–35 keV energy range. In addition it will be possible to switch to full‐field microscopy with 50 nm spatial resolution. Other microscopies will be developed according to the scientific needs. Resolution beyond the limitations given by the detector and X‐ray optics will be achieved on the ‘coherence’ branch. Techniques working in the far field such as Coherent X‐Ray Diffraction and other Coherent Diffraction Imaging techniques such as ptychography will be implemented. Typical applications cover different fields such as bio‐medicine, materials science, geo‐ and astrophysics or even cultural heritage. The beamline hosts a number of innovative features such as the so‐called ‘mini‐beta’ layout for electron optics in the storage ring or new concepts for beamline instrumentation. The stations will be operational in 2011.

Germanium and silicon kinoform focusing lenses for hard x-rays

Progress in synchrotron radiation instrumentation and successful fabrication of novel x-ray optics enables probing the matter at micro- and nano-scales from virtually any sciences – from biomedical, environmental to material sciences. In-line, compact focusing optics, based on refraction, are designed and fabricated for use in hard and very hard x-ray beamlines at Diamond. The first test results at a Diamond beamline, using micro-focusing silicon and germanium lenses, are discussed in this paper.