Commissioning and performance of X-ray absorption spectroscopy beamline at the Siam Photon Laboratory

We report commissioning results and performance of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) beamline, BL-8, at the Siam Photon Laboratory. BL-8 has been opened for users since the year 2006. It is tunable by a fixed-exit double crystal monochromator equipped with InSb(1 1 1), Si(1 1 1), and Ge(2 2 0) crystals covering photon energy from 1830 to 9000 eV. Thus elemental absorption K-edges of silicon up to copper can be investigated. Other heavier elements may be studied via their L or M edges. The front end is windowless and the beamline is terminated with a Kapton window followed by the XAS station equipped with ionization chambers for transmission-mode measurements. The measured photon flux at sample is approximately 108–1010 photons/s/100 mA for the 1 mm×10 mm beam size. The commissioning XANES spectra of sulfur standards and EXAFS spectra of copper are presented.