A sample environment cell for long-duration X-ray diffraction studies of mineral precipitation in very slow cooling aqueous environments on Earth and other planetary bodies is described. The results are reported of a year-long commissioning experiment monitoring the dynamics of a freezing MgSO4–H2O solution at −28°C (245 K) in which meridianiite and epsomite are observed to form.

A new stage design concept, the Delta Robot, is presented, which is a parallel kinematic design for scanning x-ray microscopy applications. The stage employs three orthogonal voice coils, which actuate parallelogram flexures. The design has a 3 mm travel range and achieves rms position jitter, integrated from 1 Hz to 1 kHz, of 2.8 and 1.3 nm perpendicular to the beam and 5.6 nm along the beam direction with loads up to 350 g. The Delta Robot design process used a mechatronics approach of iterative modeling and simulation to develop the system and validate performance. The design considerations, design process, stability, and operational performance on the hard x-ray nanoprobe at Diamond Light Source are presented.

Synchrotron Endstations typically use a stack of coarse and fine motion stages to position and scan a sample in the beam. The serial nature of this design causes a low resonant frequency and hence limits the position stability. The combination of multiple stages also adds motion control and data analysis complexity. A large range parallel kinematic cartesian sample scanner has been designed, built, tested and installed to address these limitations. The stage combines a 3 mm travel range with < 3 nm RMS position jitter in the scan directions and < 1 nm/minute thermal drift during scanning. This paper describes and demonstrates the mechatronic design process of Dynamic Error Budgeting. The stage is installed and fully operational on beamline I14 at the Diamond Light Source being used for nanoscale XRF mapping, imaging and ptychography.