Developing 100 ps-resolved X-ray structural analysis capabilities on beamline NW14A at the Photon Factory Advanced Ring

Abstract

NW14A is a newly constructed undulator beamline for 100 ps time-resolved X-ray experiments at the Photon Factory Advanced Ring. This beamline was designed to conduct a wide variety of time-resolved X-ray measurements, such as time-resolved diffraction, scattering and X-ray absorption fine structure. Its versatility is allowed by various instruments, including two undulators, three diffractometers, two pulse laser systems and an X-ray chopper. The potential for the detection of structural changes on the 100 ps time scale at NW14A is demonstrated by two examples of photo-induced structural changes in an organic crystal and photodissociation in solution.

State of the art and opportunities in probing photoinduced phase transitions in molecular materials by conventional and picosecond X-ray diffraction

“…The transverse profile of the channel is trapezoidal and by moving the chopper horizontally the opening time can be tuned to different time structures of the synchrotron. An almost identical beamline has been recently built at KEK-AR, Tsukuba (Nozawa et al, 2007).…”

“…Unfortunately the long wavelength of optical light precludes direct structural information at the atomic/molecular level. Recent technological innovations (Schotte et al, 2002;Wulff et al, 2004;Wulff et al, 2007;Nozawa et al, 2007) in synchrotron instrumentation and the development of novel data analysis have made it possible to track complex reactions by time-resolved X-ray diffraction to temporal and spatial resolutions of 100 ps and 0.01 A (Collet et al, 2003). Several experiments at the cutting edge of the synchrotron and laser technologies have now provided essential insights into fields varying from the photoinduced phase transitions (Collet et al, 2003) to photochemistry (Ihee et al, 2005) to protein crystallography (Schotte et al, 2003).…”

Synchrotron ultrafast techniques for photoactive transition metal complexes

“…Other beamlines dedicated to TR-XSS (for instance, beamline NW14A [64] (NW14 beamline @KEK website: http://pfwww.kek.jp/adachis/NW14/NW14.htm) of PF-AR at KEK (PF-AR@ KEK website: http://www-pfring.kek.jp/PF/index_html) and beamline 14-ID-B (14-ID-B beamline at APS website: http://cars9.uchicago.edu/biocars/pages/idb.shtml) at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) (APS website: http://www.aps.anl.gov/)) employ analogue setups. An ultrafast pulsed laser system is required to excite the sample at the desired wavelength.…”

X-ray diffraction for material science

“…Probing the dynamical evolution of materials is now possible with pulsed x-ray sources such as synchrotrons or 100 fs laser-based X-ray sources [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. By extending the measurements presented here in the time domain one can directly observe such new out-of-equilibrium processes.…”