A very intense and highly focused high energy X-ray beam is crucial for high pressure diffraction experiments due to the very small sample dimensions. For e.g. pressures above 100 GPa the typical sample dimensions are of the order of 20 µm or smaller. A high photon flux at high X-ray energies is required because of the limited X-ray aperture of high pressure cells and the highly absorbing pressure windows (diamonds) at energies below 15 keV. So the optimized X-ray source is of primary importance.

Monochromatic or pink beam between 15 and 60 keV is produced and shaped in three optics hutches. The experimental hutch provides Kirkpatrick-Baez mirrors for focusing, goniometers for sample positioning, further auxiliary equipment and the detectors. All of these elements are mounted on high-stability granites and can be moved and put in place by high-precision air pad lateral translations.

The focusing options are covering the range of super-nano focus, nano-focus and micro-focus between 250 nm and 1.5 µm.

The three sample stages are a nano-positioning system, a micro-positioning system for low and high temperature diamond anvil cell XRD, XRD and XRI experiments (the ‘laser-heating stage’), and a heavy-duty (maximum load 200 kg) goniometer for the Paris-Edinburgh press or other heavy equipment.

The auxiliary options are a pressure by ruby luminescence (PRL) and sample visualisation system, a Vortex detector for X-ray fluorescence measurements, a Soller slits system to reduce Compton scattering of complex sample environments and a micro-Raman system.

The ‘pink’ beam can be used with all of the focusing options and devices and is mainly used for fast time-resolved XRF experiments or dynamic compression.

ESRF acknowledges scientific and financial support by BMBF-projects '05K2019 NanoExtrem' funded 2019 - 2022:

  • Prof. Dr. Max Wilke, Institut für Geowissenschaften, Universität Potsdam, Germany (05K19IP2)
  • Prof. Dr. Sandro Jahn, Institut für Geologie und Mineralogie, Universität zu Köln, Germany (05K19PK2)