Twenty Years of the XMaS Beamline

XMaS @ the ESRF

“…XMaS celebrated 20 years of user science in 2017 [4] with continuation funding secured from EPSRC at largely 5-year intervals; 1997-2002, 2002-2007, 2007-2012, 2012-2018 Over the 20 years of operation, the beamline has existed in a form that the originators and early users would recognize (figure 1). The key components-the monochromator, mirror and diffractometer-have remained unchanged.…”

“…For example, the beamline now provides several different magnets; a 200 mT electromagnet (which can be housed in a vacuum chamber), a 1.5 T electromagnet and a 4 T superconducting warm bore magnet. Non-ambient temperatures are provided by a suite of 4 He and 3 He cryostats allowing experiments to be performed down to 1 K [5]. A cryo-furnace increases the operational temperature to 700 K. Electric fields up to several kV mm −1 are also available, fully incorporated into the cryostats and control software.…”