FACILITIES
Synchrotron X-Ray Scattering
Location: IAST
Coordinator: Prof. J. Kent Blasie, Chem, 215/898-6208
e-mail: jkblasie@sas.upenn.edu
The LRSM is a charter member of the Complex Materials Consoritum (CMC), which is a consortium of scientists self-assembled for the pursuit of state-of-the-art synchrotron radiation-based materials research at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory. The CMC's collective research program concerns more generally the structures and properties of so-called "Complex Materials" drawing members from three MRSECs (PENN, Princeton and UCSB), plus the Physics Department at the University of Tennessee, the Solid State Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Physics Department of Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Basic Energy Sciences Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Exxon Corporate Research Laboratory. The CMC has secured funding from the DOE and the NSF in addition to "up-front" funds from the charter institutions to construct beamlines on the undulator-magnet source and on the bending-magnet source at Sector 9 of the APS. The endstations on these beamlines, each with doubly-focusing x-ray optics, will contain instrumentation optimized for absorption spectroscopy, scattering from solid surfaces, high DQ-resolution scattering, small-angle scattering and scattering from liquid-surfaces, including state-of-the-art detection. The commissioning of the first undulator beamline and the small-angle and liquid-surface (see figure below) spectrometers began in summer '99. Several initial experiments have been performed (Blasie, Egami, Heiney, Gibbs-BNL). The construction of the remaining beamlines is underway.
In-house high-resolution x-ray scattering facilities provide for essential work preliminary to that at synchrotron radiation facilities. Those at the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter are based on a Nonius FR-591 high-brightness rotating-anode x-ray generator, focusing optics, and a two-dimensional detector.