I want to know what the advantages are of synchrotron radiation for material analysis in comparison with conventional methods?
I searched through the internet but I couldn't find anything helpful.
Hello Meysam,
Here are two introductory synchrotron information from SSRL (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, Menlo Park, CA, USA) (http://goo.gl/5bPgtE) and Austrailian Synchrotron (State of Victoria) (http://goo.gl/XSz0CZ).
For detailed explanations on possible experiments that can be conducted (e.g: EXAFS, Extended X-ray Fine Absorption Structure), you will have to read more scientifically detailed references (e.g: http://goo.gl/WxqQ8l for EXAFS).
Hope this helps!
It's a great question. There is a synchrotron in Brazil but I have a doubts about performance and applications in Condensed Matter. For example, a provide syncrotron light is coherent? It's
Well, synchrotron radiation has many advantages compared to laboratory sources, but one should consider the different spectral ranges as for example infrared (large wavelength, say above 1 micrometer), the optical and UV-range (intermediate wavelength, say from about 900 nm to about 100 nm) and X- and gamma-rays (short wavelength, well below 10 nm).
For the larger wavelength range (UV-visible, IR, etc), there are lasers available in many cases, but those have a fixed energy in most cases, and tuning of the energy is difficult. This can easily be done with SR, where you only need a monochromator and pick up the wavelength you need from the continuous SR spectrum. Especially for the new-coming terrahertz eexperiments this offers somehow unique experimental opportunities! Using undulators the intensity can be substancially increased compared to a rather simple bending magnet. The pulsed behaviour of the electron bunches in the ring enable pump-probe experiments of atoms and molecules etc, so this is woth while to consider.
For the short wavelength range (i.e. X-rays), the question can easily be answered:
First of all intensity - this will be much larger for almost any SR-source. Even small synchrotrons with say only 1 GeV electron energy offer an X-ray flux that is far above all what laboratory sources may offer. The beam is almost ideal (i.e. parallel), again you are able to make use of the time-structure, the SR-light may be linearly polarized, circularly polarized light (which is extremely useful for the investigation of magnetic materials) can also be produced. And, you are again able to tune the energy of your beam. This is useful for X-ray spectroscopy (EXAFS etc) but also for diffraction, where you can tune the energy to a value, where the elements of your sample do not emit fluorescence radiation that will be present as background in a laboratory setup, disturbing e.g. resolution etc. Furthermore the radiation is parallel, so the experimental resulution in SR-diffraction is much better in general. In addition, you can do anomalous diffraction experiments, i.e. switch on and off the scattering atoms by using energies above and below their absorption edges (useful e.g. for complex oxides (HTc-superconductors) etc).
And again intensity: You are able to perform experiments on extremely small samples (SR can now be focussed down to the 10 nm range, so a single nanoscale object may be investigated by diffraction, scattering, sopectroscopy, ...) or extremely small amounts of material in general. This also includes very dilute samples (below ppb-level).
For photoelectron spectroscopy, besides the tunability to harder X-rays (see HAXPES in the literature and the ability to measure core-level photoelectrons which cannot be accessed by laboratory sources because of the extremely small photoionization cross sections), the escape depth of the photoelectrons can easily be tuned, and depth resolved experiments and also bulk sensitive XPS can be performed.
There is still much more to tell, but I would refer to the websites of the SR-sources worldwide, where research highlights are posted on more or less all sites (www.esrf.eu, http://photon-science.desy.de/, http://www.psi.ch/psi-home, etc)
Books I can recomment are those of Phil Willmott (An Introduction to Synchrotron Radiation: Techniques and Applications, DOI: 10.1002/9781119970958,
or that of Jens-Als-Nielsen and Des McMorrow, Elements of Modern X-ray Physics, from Wiley, or the review from Helmut Wiedemann (www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-r-637a.pdf).
Hope this has helped a bit, Dirk
@Daniel - the Brazil SR-center in Campinas/Sao Paulo (http://lnls.cnpem.br/) is well suited for condensed matter research - they do all kinds of diffraction, spectroscopy, etc. And Brazil is currently planning a new state of the art Sr-source (SIRIUS), as far as I know, the ground breaking has just started in 2013 ...
Dirk
Dear Jea Cho, Daniel Valim, Sebastián Feliu and Dirk Luetzenkirchen-Hecht thanks for your attention. you helped me so much. I have other questions about synchrotron that maybe I'll ask them after that I read these references that you offered me.
yours sincerely.
In general Synchrotron Radiation is ideal for characterisation of complex (disordered) materials.
1. Atomic probe - gives element specific information.
2, Short medium and long range order length scales.
3. Bulk crystalline, amorphous and disordered solid phase materials and samples in solution.
4. Surfaces and interfaces.
5. Local atomic geometry and the chemical state of the centrally excited absorbing atom.
6. Levels from a few ppm to a 100%.
The high intensity of a Synchrotron Radiation beam allows -
7. In situ /time resolved studies.
8. Combined (simultaneous) techniques e.g. XRD/EXAFS, SAXS/WAXS, XAS/Raman etc
see http://xafs.org/Tutorials for a great source of information in this area
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