Dear Colleagues,

 

As usual, a few days before the ESRF proposal deadline we send you this 

reminder.

 

The beamline is going very well. Recently we have performed coherent 

diffraction experiment on metal nanoparticles and the beamline is 

perfectly suited also for this technique in terms of stability and 

repeatability. The main difference with respect to ID01 is that they 

mainly work in the specular plane while we can mostly look to reflections 

outside the specular plane. This has advantages and limitations.

 

Concerning the experimental set up we have some important improvements:

 

a) The flow reactor for catalysis studies is now connected to a new 

gas line which can be fully controlled by spec. The gas composition is 

controlled with the same procedure used for moving motors. The same is 

for the sample temperature. The big advantage is that now we are able 

to carry out macros giving more flexibility in exploring the 

thermodynamic conditions were reactions might occur.

 

b) In the UHV chamber of EH2 we have replaced the phi and chi circles 

normally used for the surface alignment procedure with an hexapod. 

This makes the procedure much simpler and faster and also eliminated 

all the problems connected with the z movement of the sample. This 

gives also the opportunity of centering the sample surface at the 

center of rotation of the diffractometer giving the possibility of 

studying sample with dimensions smaller than 1 mm.

 

c) As you know we can carry out simultaneous measurement of surface 

diffraction and GISAXS. With this aim we have developed new mask slits 

which will greatly reduce the backgorund in the case of GISAXS 

measurements. They will be installed during this spring shutdown and 

debugged before the summer.

 

d) We have finally found the way and developed a sample holder 

suitable for Si samples. Now we can flash Si wafers with a pressure 

remaining in the 10-10 mbar. So far I have been reticent in accepting 

proposal on Si because our system was not clean enough for this 

samples. Now I am perfectly confident we can do it.

 

In the case you need more information do not hesitate in contacting us.

 

Your sincerely,

 

Roberto