Beamline description

The X-Ray Fluorescence beamline is a multipurpose instrument run under the joint supervision of Elettra and IAEA.
 

The beamline is built downstream of a bending magnet, section 10.1 of Elettra storage ring and it is devoted to XRF, XRR, XAS.
A wide energy range is provided by two pairs of crystals (2 - 14 keV) or of multilayers  0.7 - 14 keV).
The source is re-imaged to a 450 x 300 μm beamsize (hor x ver) at exit slits (~ 23 m from the source), with an angular divergence of 0.15 mrad and a transmitted flux of about 5 10⁹ ph/s (at 5.5 keV, machine mode 2.0 GeV).

The sample environment is a vacuum chamber, project of the IAEA, based on a prototype designed and built by the PTB and TU Berlin, Germany.

The general layout of the beamline is the following:

End Station

The IAEAXspe end station includes the following components:

1. Main and load-lock ultra-high vacuum (UHV) chambers with a sample holder transfer mechanism;
2. A base system including three motorized stages for the alignment of the chamber with respect to the SR beam;
3. A seven-axis motorized manipulator controlled by a Stepping Motor Controller (SMC) for positioning the sample and the detectors regarding the synchrotron beam direction, with thermocouples to prevent overheating of the motors and different types of sample holders;
4. Two Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) for XRF and one for XRR measurements;
5. Several GaAs and Si photodiodes of various thicknesses as X-ray monitoring detectors connected to a picoammeter;
6. Two video cameras for inspecting a large (macro-camera) and small (micro-camera) field of view on the sample surface (see below for details);
7. UHV pumping system composed of turbomolecular and rotation pumps, vacuum gauges, gate valves controlled by a Gate Valve Controller (GVC);
8. A Tango-based command and data acquisition server coupled with a user-friendly Graphical User Interface to operate the instruments.

Some of the instruments are shown in the schematic diagrams below:

External (left) and internal (right) view of the IAEAXspe end station components.
(schematic drawings prepared by PTB, Berlin)



The IAEAXspe end station installed at the XRF beamline of the Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste

 

Video Cameras

The end station is equipped with two (2) cameras for visual inspection of the sample, one providing overall view (macro-camera) and another for detailed visualization (micro-camera) of a given area of the sample.
 
Specifications - Macro camera:
Lumenera Lw235C 2.0 megapixel USB colour camera with 1/1.8” CCD sensor, 55mm Telecentric C-mount Lens. It provides a field of view of approx. 5 x 5 cm² giving the possibility to preview the sample holder (i.e. sample versus X-ray detector position)
 
Specifications - Micro camera:
PCO.pixelfy, 1.3 megapixel USB colour camera with 2/3” CCD sensor, Infinity K2/SC DistaMax long distance microscope, LED illumination system
 
The microscope together with camera is mounted on the plane defined by the synchrotron beam and the X-ray detector axis. The angle between the microscope axis and synchrotron beam / detector axis is 45°. This system provides a field of view of approx. 5 x 4 mm².

The two video cameras installed on the end station: the macro-camera (left)
and the micro-camera with the microscope (right).