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A new soft X-ray beamline, BL07LSU, has been constructed at SPring-8 to perform advanced soft X-ray spectroscopy for materials science. The beamline is designed to achieve high energy resolution (E/ÁE> 10000) and high photon flux [>10 12 photons s À1 (0.01% bandwidth) À1 ] in the photon energy range 250-2000 eV with controllable polarization. To realise this state-of-the-art performance, a novel segmented cross undulator was developed and adopted as a light source. The details of the undulator light source and beamline monochromator design are described. The achieved performance of the beamline, such as the photon flux, energy resolution and the state of polarization, is reported.

Scientific and engineering research on soft materials requires precise structural analysis to understand their hierarchical and fluctuating nature. A new beamline, the BL03XU frontier soft-material beamline, that is dedicated to scattering experiments on soft materials was recently installed at the third-generation synchrotron facility, SPring-8, in Japan. The BL03XU uses an in-vacuum undulator, and the photon flux of the obtained X-ray can reach 10 13 photons sec À1 , with an energy resolution of DE/EE2Â10 À4 at 12.4 keV. The BL03XU has two experimental hutches: a front one that is used for grazing-incidence scattering experiments and a second one for transmitting scattering experiments, which enables simultaneous small-and wide-angle X-ray scattering. The present paper introduces details about the instrument and some of the first scattering data measured at BL03XU, which reveals its cutting-edge design and high level of performance. INTRODUCTIONSoft materials represent a wide range of organic compounds that include polymers, colloids, surfactants and membranes. They exist in a variety of physical states that include semicrystallite, amorphous and glassy states, as well as liquid, thin film and micelle states. They are indispensably important materials in our daily lives as well as in modern industry. From a morphological point of view, they all share common features: fuzziness and hierarchy, which originate in the assembled structure of their constituent molecules and the timedependent fluctuations of their structure. Understanding the physical properties of soft materials and thus controlling and providing functionality requires accurate characterization of their fuzziness and hierarchy. Their constituent molecules are organized into mesoscopic structures that are larger than atoms and molecules, but much smaller than the macroscopic scale of the materials. The required observation scale can therefore range from B10 À1 to 10 4 nm. The X-ray scattering technique, which has a combination of wide-and small-angle measurements, is one of the best tools to use in characterizing such systems. In addition, the fragile and hierarchical objects generally