ID09 - MS/XPD (Materials Science/X-ray Powder Diffraction) beamline

Source

MS/XPD is based on a wiggler source operated at 12 mm magnetic gap equivalent to 1.38 T. the flux produced from the wiggler is high compared to a bending magnet source. The main components of the front end are

1. Fixed mask for defining the beamline acceptance angles
2. Photon shutter to stop the photon beam whenever necessary 
3. Rotating filter 
4. White beam slits
5. Radiation stopper

Optical Layout

The MS/XPD beamline optical layout consist of a cylindrically collimated Rhodium coated mirror fixed aligned to 3 m rad grazing angle. Then Kozhu Si (111) double-crystal fixed exit monochromator is located to select the energy, with second sagittal crystal to focus the beam horizontally at the sample location. Then a second cylindrical Rhodium coated mirror to focus the beam vertically.

Experimental station

The MS/XPD experimental station is based on a refurbished two circle diffractometer previously was installed at I19 beamline at Diamond synchrotron. The inner rotary (theta) is for the sample rotation while the second rotary (2theta) is for the detector rotation. A homemade spinner for transmission experiments is fixed on a translational XY stage attached on the theta rotary. 

Pilatus 300K detector (donated by DECTRIS company) is the main detector in use at MS/XPD end station, it has a very good time resolution together with a reasonable angular resolution gained by fixing the detector at 740 mm distance from the sample.

Heating and cooling samples in capillaries are possible at MS/XPD using a hot gas blower and liquid nitrogen cryostat respectively, moreover further sample environmental stages can be added to the experimental station.

Note: This input is synced with WayForLight.

• Powder samples filled in glass capillaries (Boro Silicate for room temperature; Quartz for temperature dependent)
• Capillary spinner 
• Gas blower for temperature dependent experiments (RT – 1000 C)
• Liquid nitrogen cryostat (to be ready soon)

• Output data type as (2D images , Ascii (xy) files)
• PDF-4 database 
• “Match!” software for phase matching analysis is available
• Several refinement software for structural analysis (e.g. GSAS-II, Fullprof)

An analytical calibration procedure to convert 2D TIFF images to Ascii(xy) files is used through a macro script of ImageJ software. Then a simple executable Python-based code is then used to merge all data files for each experiment to create one merged file (Zubi & Abdellatief, 2021: https://github.com/SESAME-Synchrotron/2thetaFilesMerger).