Development of Strongly Focusing Hard X-ray Optics for Brilliant Synchrotron Radiation Sources

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This award provides one-half the funding necessary to develop instrumentation that is needed to focus hard X-rays at the Advanced Photon Source (APS). The remaining necessary funds are to be committed by the University of Chicago on behalf of the Consortium for Advanced Radiation Sources (CARS). The capabilities of existing X-ray focusing monochromators and mirrors are inadequate to take full advantage of the extraordinarily brilliant radiation at APS. They use either large focusing lengths, thus limiting their source demagnification, or focus only a small fraction of the transmitted radiation into the required small cross-section. Furthermore, they cannot withstand the high heat load imposed by the APS X-ray beam. The purpose of this instrumentation development is to enable new classes of experiments by providing significant improvement in the linear spatial resolution and stability of X-ray optical instrumentation to be used at the APS. Techniques which are affected include: X-ray absorption spectroscopy from small or dilute samples ranging from geological samples to metallo-proteins; microtomography and X-ray fluorescence microprobe analysis of samples as diverse as plant roots and meteorites; micro-crystal diffraction from zeolites and metal cluster compounds; in-plane surface diffraction from liquid samples at grazing incidence; reflectivity measurements from liquid surfaces; small angle scattering from polymers and macromolecular assemblies including muscle; and time-resolved energy-dispersive spectroscopy from catalysts. All of these techniques require focusing of the incident X-rays to a very small cross-section and can tolerate only a minor increase in angular convergence of the beam. The improvements in spatial resolution and brilliance allows use of smaller volumes of materials, will permit time-resolved studies, and in general improve the sensitivity of all techniques. The resulting instrumentation will be used by scientists and research groups that are members of CARS, including workers in the areas of earth sciences, chemistry, materials research and the biosciences. All instrument design developments will be made available to the entire science community with science applications at APS.