The materials science beamline at the Swiss Light Source: design and realization

The Materials Science Beamline at the Swiss Light Source (SLS) has been designed to produce hard X-rays in the photon-energy range 5–40 keV, at an intermediate energy (2.4 GeV) synchrotron. To this end, it employs a novel “minigap wiggler”. Important issues in the design and realization of the beamline are the high heat load, robust system design, flexibility of operation and user-friendliness. A conventional collimating-mirror/sagittally focusing double-crystal monochromator/focusing mirror optics has been chosen with approximately 1:1 symmetry. Established component designs have been used wherever possible. Three serial end-stations are served with X-rays. Besides the minigap wiggler, other novel or unusual features are: continuous “top-up” injection in the SLS storage-ring, a rotating carbon “cup” filter in the beamline front-end, angles and bending radii of the optics mirrors which are adjusted at each change in photon-energy and special experimental-station equipment including high-speed one- and two-dimensional semiconductor detectors for powder and surface diffraction and a two-dimensional “Bragg magnifier” for tomography. In this work, a comparison is made between predicted and measured beamline properties, and Appendices with useful formulae and algorithms are provided.