The majority of the beamlines at the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Source Laboratory (LNLS) use radiation produced in the storage-ring bending magnets and are therefore currently limited in the flux that can be used in the harder part of the X-ray spectrum (above ∼10 keV). A 4 T superconducting multipolar wiggler (SCW) was recently installed at LNLS in order to improve the photon flux above 10 keV and fulfill the demands set by the materials science community. A new multi-purpose beamline was then installed at the LNLS using the SCW as a photon source. The XDS is a flexible beamline operating in the energy range between 5 and 30 keV, designed to perform experiments using absorption, diffraction and scattering techniques. Most of the work performed at the XDS beamline concentrates on X-ray absorption spectroscopy at energies above 18 keV and high-resolution diffraction experiments. More recently, new setups and photon-hungry experiments such as total X-ray scattering, X-ray diffraction under high pressures, resonant X-ray emission spectroscopy, among others, have started to become routine at XDS. Here, the XDS beamline characteristics, performance and a few new experimental possibilities are described.

This work reports the setting up of the X-ray diffraction and spectroscopy beamline at the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory for performing total scattering experiments to be analyzed by atomic pair distribution function (PDF) studies. The results of a PDF refinement for AlO standard are presented and compared with data acquired at a beamline of the Advanced Photon Source, where it is common to perform this type of experiment. A preliminary characterization of the PbLaZrTiO ferroelectric system, with x = 0.11, 0.12 and 0.15, is also shown.

Experimentally achieving extreme thermodynamical conditions of temperature, pressure and magnetic field such as the ones found in the interior of planets and stars has been a dream to many scientists seeking to reproduce those conditions on earth to study and produce unconventional materials. The advent of the 4th generation Brazilian synchrotron source (named after the “Sirius” star) allows us to get closer to this dream by implementing a state-of-the-art beamline facility to study samples under extreme thermodynamical conditions by means of a multitude of synchrotron x-ray techniques. The EMA Beamline (Extreme condition Methods of Analysis) will be able to do this by coupling both microfocus (1x1 µm2) and nanofocus (100x100 nm2) beamsizes to x-ray magnetic spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction and x-ray coherent imaging in multiple experimental instruments, placed along the beam path for optimization. Support laboratories (thermodynamical conditions, nuclear materials, laser and optics) were also planned to fulfil all requirements for the experiments under extreme. The EMA beamline, as overviewed here, should open a plethora of opportunities for diverse studies of materials at extreme conditions with synchrotron x-ray techniques.

X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) is a technique commonly used to probe magnetic properties of materials with element and orbital selectivity, which requires the use of circularly polarized (CP) X-rays. It is possible to accomplish XMCD experiments with fixed CP and alternating the magnetic field orientation, but most reliable data are obtained when alternating the magnetization orientation and the polarization between right and left helicities. A versatile strategy has been developed to perform XMCD experiments using a hard X-ray quarter-wave plate, at both polychromatic dispersive and conventional monochromatic optics, in combination with synchronous data acquisition. The switching frequency waveform is fed into a lock-in amplifier to detect and amplify the XMCD signal. The results on a reference sample demonstrate an improvement in data quality and acquisition time. The instrumentation successfully generated 98% of CP X-rays switching the beam helicity at 13 Hz, with the possibility of faster helicity switching once it is installed at the new Brazilian fourth-generation source, SIRIUS.