A new apparatus for hard x-ray micro-imaging and microdiffraction experiments at BL24XU of SPring-8

A new apparatus has been constructed for hard x-ray micro-imaging and microdiffraction experiments at BL24XU of the SPring-8. The new apparatus can be used as a scanning microscope mainly for mapping measurements of trace elements, a microdiffractometer with either a theta-2theta arrangement or an IP detector and an imaging microscope. As its optical devise, two phase zone plates made of tantalum can be mounted on each precision stage. In the scanning microscope and the microdiffraction experiments, a sub-mum beam are available with the photon flux of similar to10(9) photons/sec at 10 keV. The imaging microscope, making structures visible as fine as 60-nm line-and-space pattern at 10 keV, is used for Zernike's phase-contrast microscopy to visualize transparent specimens, microtomography achieving a 0.6-mum spatial resolution and micro-interferometry enabling the phase measurement with a few hundred-nm spatial resolution. In this paper, the details of the apparatus are described and some experimental topics are presented.