research papers
A description of a new facility for X-ray absorption spectroscopy at the materials science beamline, I811, at MAX-lab synchrotron source, Lund, Sweden, is given. The beamline is based on a superconducting multipole wiggler source inserted in a straight section of the 1.5 GeV MAX-II ring. X-rays in the energy range 2.4-12 keV are extracted by a standard optical scheme consisting of a vertical collimating first mirror, double-crystal monochromator, and a second vertically focusing mirror. The second monochromator crystal provides sagittal focusing. The total flux impinging on the sample at 9 keV is 5 × 1011 photons s-1, for a minimum beam spot of 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm. The beamline has facilities for experiments in transmission, fluorescence and total-electron-yield mode and experiments have been performed by international research groups on a wide range of materials, such as dilute systems with metal concentrations below 10 p.p.m.