this page is still under construction. It will be filled steadily during the next weeks

Motivations and Goals

The applications to micro and nano objects call for intense narrow X-ray beams available at latest generation synchrotron only. The strong demand for structural characterization of objects with ever decreasing sizes has driven the development of new methods to go beyond the average internal structure down to the local structure determination. Probing the local strain, shape (size, orientation) and composition of micro and nano materials are the main objectives of our Laue micro-diffraction setup, this setup being the first in Europe.

The microdiffraction setup is operational since 2006.

Laue Pattern single crystal UO2 covered by three variants of U3O7 (quadratic expansion 3% along a*,b* and c*)

 

MicroBeam performance ( July 2013)

Download a short descrition of Laue microdiffraction (in french, extracted from Annual Report 2013)

Polychromatic beamsize on sample (Full-Width-at-Half-Maximum):

horizontally : 0.3 micrometer

vertically : 0.3 micrometer

When using the sample translation stages, sample surface is tilted by 40 degrees with respect to the beam and the horizontal plane. This inclination increase by approximately 50% the actual footprint of the beam in the vertical direction only.

Spectral energy ranges currnetly from 5 to 23 keV

High energy limit can be lowered by changing optics mirrors angles down to typically 12-15 keV. This setup is suitable for disentangling Laue Patterns coming from many grains with large amount of peaks (large unit cell dimensions or/and atoms with high Z values)

 

Installation and Alignment duration

Installation of the entire setup (KBs , sample translations, CCD, other equipments...) from scratch to microsized white beam delivered to users takes generally 8 hours.

Data Analysis -

Laue Microdiffraction Data can be handled and reduced by the home developed and open source Software: LaueTools

peaksearch.png

LaueTools software package development:

Main page of the project (documentation, installation, bug reports, functionalities inquiry)

Sourceforge.net main page of the project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/lauetools/

Browse the codes: http://lauetools.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/lauetools/trunk/

 

You may have a look at some presentations:

Scisoft Meeting at ESRF:  "LaueTools: a software package for Laue MicroDiffraction Data Analysis"  (29th July 2010)

Laue Microdiffraction: Ecole GDR MECANO Autrans (March 2010) : tutorial

BeamLine Review Panel 2010 one page general presentation of the microdiffraction setup available at this date.

Laue Microdiffraction: Workshop GDR MECANO (september 2009): Automatic analysis: dream or reality ?

Laue Microdiffraction: Workshop GDR MECANO (september 2009): LaueTools