C'Nano Nord-Ouest news 

june 2008

Sub-micron diffraction beamline at SOLEIL (synchrotron Laue m-diffraction)

P. Goudeau (PHYMAT Poitiers), O. Thomas (IM2NP Marseille)




Micro-focused x-ray beams from 1 down to less than 0.1 micron in size have been one of the real success stories of 3rd generation synchrotron x-ray machines (SR), thanks to a large panel of focusing devices for hard and soft x-rays. There is clearly a rapidly growing need for very small x-ray beams – 10 nm is theoretically possible - which allow for non-destructive local scale measurements of structure and chemistry. Among the tools using microbeams, XRD technique is specific in the sense that the recorded signal does not only depend on the beam size but also on the ratio of the beam size to the grain size. If the beam size over grain size ratio is small one gets single crystals diffraction (Laue). This beam line project is unique in Europe since there is almost nothing in European countries in terms of fully dedicated WB µXRD beam line except the BM32 project at ESRF (10 % of the full beam line time) and at SLS (PSI Switzerland) for transmission mode with a larger beam size. The Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of SOLEIL approved the preliminary beam line project APS (download) in november 2005 and the SOLEIL Council gave consent in july 2006 for building this additional beam line which will be entirely fund by external funds (not yet found).