Technology Commercialization and Partnerships | BSA 07-10: Sagittal Focusing Laue Monochromator

Category: electronics & instrumentation

BSA 07-10: Sagittal Focusing Laue Monochromator

BNL Reference Number: BSA 07-10

Patent Status: U.S. Patent Number 7,508,912 was issued on March 24, 2009

Summary

Describes a device that can focus divergent high-energy x-rays while maintaining good energy resolution and increasing the useful flux by 1000 over standard techniques. The device solves the problem of ineffective focusing of high-energy x-ray beam lines.

Description

The invention uses a set of Laue crystals, named for German physicist Max von Laue, to diffract an x-ray beam, as opposed to reflecting the beam. The invention uses the lattice planes inside such crystals to monochromatize and focus the x-rays, thus allowing them to be almost perpendicular to the surface of the crystal. The transmission geometry renders the beam's illumination length small, reducing the control of the crystal's figure-error from a two-dimensional problem to a one-dimensional one. This concept takes advantage of the fact that high-energy x-rays have enough penetrating power to go through the thickness of the Laue crystal.

Benefits

The Laue geometry of the crystals provides advantageous anticlastic bending with reduced cost and ease of operation. The simple linear translation capabilities of the invention allows for one-motion tuning of x-ray energy. Therefore, in addition to gains of focusing, an order-of-magnitude increase in the monochromatic intensity can be achieved while providing better energy resolution, compared to Bragg crystals.

Applications and Industries

The device is ideally suited for high-energy synchrotron x-ray beamlines worldwide. The types of synchrotron x-ray sources capable of producing high-energy x-rays are wiggler or bending-magnet devices. They typically provide a horizontal divergence of about 10 milli-radians. This product’s ability to focus a large divergence allows full utilization of the source divergence of high-energy x-ray devices. The high-energy x-rays produced can be used for x-ray scattering, spectroscopy, and diffraction. In addition, the device can be utilized on an x-ray tube widely used for laboratory-based x-ray diffraction and fluorescence analysis to extend their energy range to higher x-ray energies, and to provide orders-of-magnitude increases in intensity on the sample.