DetailNewly developed endstation for SpAnTeX
High electron transmission and detection efficiency at pressures up to 30 mbar and photoelectron energies between 200 eV and 10keV.
The development of modern NAP-XPS spectrometers, allowing for operation at pressures > 25 mbar (so equal or above the vapor pressure of water at room temperature), opens the door to a new level of understanding of the materials’ electronic and structural properties underlying the solid/liquid interfacial phenomena.
The newly developed endstation at the BESSY II synchrotron facility, dedicated to in situ and operando Spectroscopic Analysis with Tender X-rays (SpAnTeX) is a perfect example of a modern spectrometer setup using NAP XPS technology to provide detailed chemical composition information about solid/liquid interfaces. The end station was realized as a collaboration between the group of David E. Starr (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin) and SPECS, and its performance details can be found in Surface Science under the title Spectroscopic analysis with tender X-rays: SpAnTeX, a new AP-HAXPES end-station at BESSY II.
The core of SpAnTeX end station is the new HV version of the proven SPECS PHOIBOS 150 NAP analyzer. The system has successfully achieved high electron transmission and detection efficiency under pressures ≤ 30 mbar and photoelectron energies in the 200 eV – 10 keV range. Moreover, using a new laterally resolving operation mode and a 2D delay line detector, it enables spectro-microscopy under realistic working conditions with a lateral resolution better than 30 μm and the possibility to perform time-resolved studies using a continuous tender X-ray source. The finite ToF spread of the photoelectrons through the spectrometer is the dominating factor determining the overall time resolution, allowing to resolve processes happening in the sub-ns regime.
A further highlight of SpAnTeX is its modular construction: while the analyzer stays fixed at the beamline, different experimental modules can be transferred onto and off the electron spectrometer frame, allowing to tailor sample environment modules specifically for the experiments of interest.
Although mainly focused on the characterization of solid/liquid interfaces, the end-station can be used at soft X-ray beamlines for more traditional NAP-XPS experiments.