In the frame of the Extremely Brilliant Source project (EBS), studies dedicated to disturbances have been more intensively investigated. Engineering instabilities have two origins: mechanical and thermal. Major thermal issues are: - air conditioning presents a temperature ramp up of 2°C along the sector - storage ring requires a warm up period of 4 days for reaching a stable orbit These effects have been observed and corrected for 20 years. With EBS requirements, we need to identify these thermal effects in order to reduce the disturbances, thus improving more systematically the source stability. The study is lead by the comparison between the present and the new thermal system. To do so, it is necessary to evaluate the heat balance in this system, as well as to identify the thermal time constant of each component. FEA models have been performed to reveal sensitivity of these thermal issues. A full scale mock-up cell equipped with a prototype girder is measured with power cables inside. A FEA model was also developed for the present storage ring to analyse the air stream. Although investigations have already been developed, some others remain to be achieved by the end of 2016.

The ESRF is proceeding with the design and procurement of its new low emittance storage ring (Extremely Brilliant Source project). This completely new storage ring requires a high performance support system, providing high stability (first resonance frequency about 50Hz) and a precise alignment capability (50μm, manual in transverse direction and motorized in the vertical one). In order to meet these requirements we decided to support the magnets of each of the 32 cells of the synchrotron with four identical girders that was considered the best compromise between cost, complexity and performances. Each of the resulting 128 girders is 5.1m long, carries about seven tons of magnets, and its weight including fixed basement and adjusting system is six tons. The adjustment system relies on modified commercial wedges; their stiffness was evaluated through laboratory tests. The FEA calculations carried out to optimize the design will be presented, together with the results obtained on a complete prototype girder system which was built and extensively tested and confirmed the modal calculations.

In the framework of its upgrade, the ESRF is designing a new lattice to replace the present double-bend achromat structure. This new lattice fulfills the following constraints and requirements: It fits in the present tunnel and keeps the insertion device source points at the same location;Its target horizontal emittance is around 150 pm;It keeps the electron energy at 6 GeV in order to preserve the spectral properties of the present beamlines;It minimizes the radiation losses and the magnet electrical consumption in order to decrease operating costs;The present injector complex is re-used with minor changes.

Tomography is a standard and invaluable technique that covers a large range of length scales. It gives access to the inner morphology of specimens and to the three-dimensional (3D) distribution of physical quantities such as elemental composition, crystalline phases, oxidation state, or strain. These data are necessary to determine the effective properties of investigated heterogeneous media. However, each tomographic technique relies on severe sampling conditions and physical principles that require the sample to be adequately shaped. For that purpose, a wide range of sample preparation techniques is used, including mechanical machining, polishing, sawing, ion milling, or chemical techniques. Here, we focus on the basics of tomography that justify such advanced sample preparation, before reviewing and illustrating the main techniques. Performances and limits are highlighted, and we identify the best preparation technique for a particular tomographic scale and application. The targeted tomography techniques include hard X-ray micro- and nanotomography, electron nanotomography, and atom probe tomography. The article mainly focuses on hard condensed matter, including porous materials, alloys, and microelectronics applications, but also includes, to a lesser extent, biological considerations.

The construction of new beamlines defined in the ESRF upgrade program, requires high performance optics, for which thermal and mechanical stability will be of the utmost importance. Solutions for optimizing drifts and thermal gradients, as well as vibration free positioning have been analysed. This has lead to new opto-mechanical engineering able to implement generic solutions for the optics, such as new architecture for flat or bent mirrors, multilayer monochromators, and a new generation hexapod for toroidal mirrors. Vertical incidence fine tuning within 200 nrad, as well as horizontal reflection resolution in the range of 50 nrad, has lead to the development of different movers and positioning mechanisms. A review is presented, considering the different design validation stages and laboratory commissioning and showing performance achieved on the very first upgrade beamlines.

The design, manufacture and characterization of a Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) configuration mirror system for high-throughput nanofocusing down to 50 nm beam sizes are described. To maximize the system aperture whilst retaining energy tunability, multilayer coated optics are used in conjunction with 2 dynamically figured mirror benders. This approach, which has been developed at the ESRF for many years, allows the focusing performance to be optimized when operating the system in the 13-25 keV photon energy range. Developments in the key technologies necessary for the production of mirror bending systems with dynamic figuring behavior close to the diffraction limit requirements are discussed. These include system optimization via finite element analysis (FEA) modeling of the mechanical behavior of the bender-mirror combination, manufacturing techniques for precisely-shaped multilayer substrates, multilayer deposition with steep lateral gradients and the stitching metrology techniques developed for the characterization and figure optimization of strongly aspherical surfaces. The mirror benders have been integrated into a compact and stable assembly designed for routine beamline operation and results of the initial performance of the system at the ESRF ID22NI endstation are presented demonstrating routine focusing of 17 keV X-rays to sub-60 nm resolution.

European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in-house designed Kirkpatrick–Baez (KB) focusing systems have been extensively used for high efficiency beam focusing over the past years. More recently however, increasing interest in nanofocusing techniques has directed our development efforts towards more compact, higher stability designs for dynamic focusing systems in which the optimization of numerous parameters enables mirror bending approaching its mechanical limits. Simultaneously, progress in fixed focus mirror fabrication techniques – notably ion beam figuring, differential deposition and elastic emission machining – now make the fabrication of highly elliptical, fixed focus X-ray optics an interesting option. This has simplified conception (no bending mechanics) which in turn has led to the design of miniaturized KBs.A general overview of these recent developments in both dynamic bending and fixed focus KB systems is presented.

In high-accuracy motion stages, the positioning accuracy at the point of interest is strongly influenced by guiding errors: for translation motions, straightness errors and angular errors (pitch, yaw and roll); for rotation motions, axial, radial and tilt errors. When air bearings are used for guiding, the air film averages out local irregularities of bearings surfaces, which helps reduce guiding errors considerably. Some results obtained with air bearing precision systems designed and manufactured by specialized companies and tested at ESRF are described below.

A tunable X-Ray focusing apparatus based on compound refractive lenses (CRL), referred to as a transfocator, has been installed for monochromatic beam (IAT in air transfocator) two years ago in the second optics hutch at ID11 at the ESRF. By varying the number of lenses in the beam, the energy focused and the focal length can be varied continuously throughout a large range of energies and distances.Based the success of the IAT, an in-vacuum transfocator (IVT) has now been built and installed at ID 1 I. The aim of this poster is to describe and show the mechanical and technical solutions used to design and manufacture this new IVT.The IVT was installed last January in the first optics hutch at ID11. The IVT consists of nine water cooled cartridges containing 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 Be lenses, and 32 and 64 Al lenses, and a protective aperture of empty set 900 mu m. The mechanical design is based on a system of pneumatically actuated cartridges with an auto positioning on two stainless steel rods.The vacuum vessel has translations and rotations perpendicular to the beam direction in order to align the axis of the cartridges with the x-ray beam.

The ESRF has now started its upgrade programme. It has become evident from the start that upgrading beamline performance implies upgrading component performance. Beam stability is seen as a key requirement for many of the proposed beamlines, but the source of (in)stabilities can be manyfold. However, one identified source is white beam mirror, and therefore, ESRF has recently invested significant amount of engineering effort to improve white beam mirror performance. The motivation for having ‘ultra stable mirrors’ at the upgrade beamline ID24 Dispersive Exafs is analysed. The design solutions for positioning, cooling and supporting the white beam mirrors for this project are presented.

Aluminium plates are used as power absorbers in the front end of beamline ID15 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). They absorb the low energy part of the synchrotron light in order to reduce the heat load on the following beamline components. Despite many proposed design criteria, the high heat load generated in the zone interacting with the X-rays still may result in marked deterioration of the absorber plates. Absorber plates of an old design that failed were investigated in the present study. Microscopy and diffraction methods revealed that the irradiated zone of these absorber plates recrystallised during many service hours and that its mechanical properties deteriorated. High thermal stresses built up, which were relieved by crack formation. Today a new aluminium power absorber with an optimised cooling system is implemented, which so far is successful. The present investigation provides evidence about possible failure sources in absorbers because, for increasing electron storage ring currents and an increase in heat load, similar absorber failures should be prevented.

A new state-of-the art synchrotron beamline fully optimized for monochromatic X-ray diffraction at high pressure and high ( or low) temperature is presented. In comparison with the old high-pressure beamline ID30, this new beamline exhibits outstanding performance in terms of photon flux and focusing capabilities. The main components of this new instrument will be described in detail and compared with the performance of beamline ID30. In particular, the choices in terms of X-ray source, X-ray optics, sample environment and detectors are discussed. The first results of the beamline commissioning are presented.

At the ESRF Micro-Fluorescence, Imaging and Diffraction beamline ID22, X-Ray micro-tomography is a routine technique proposed to users for 3D microanalysis of various samples. The purpose of this work is to extend 3D micro-tomography in order to obtain in-situ 3D information about samples at increasing pure axial loads. We developed a new device that allows one to combine mechanical testing and micro-tomography. The device is optimised for low Gpa Young moduli like plastics or bone but can easily be adapted to higher values. In this paper we present first results obtained with animal and human bone samples to gain insight into the bone microcrack problem.

Aluminium plates are used as power attenuators in beamline ID15 at the ESRF. They absorb the low-energy part of the synchrotron light to reduce the heat-load on the following beamline components. Despite of many proposed design criteria, the high hea

High accuracy beamline instruments have been designed and developed for 12 years at the ESRF with an increasing demand of static and dynamic qualities. Over the last five years, microscopy beamlines, and more generally, the need for micro positioning when using small X-ray beams, has been a driving force for improving instrument compactness when combining movements, and a consequence has lead to a high level of intricacy. Even if resolutions of 0.1mum, and high quality guiding (70murd), are easily found in commercially available translation stages, overall sizes and lever arms can lead to larger spheres of confusion. Moreover, environmental considerations such as vacuum compatibility can further restrict the choice of appropriate translations. To meet the various needs of the micro-focusing beamlines, compact and high-resolution micro-jacks, and xyz vacuum compatible cross tables have been developed in-house. A series of "standard" low profile components such as elevators (1mum, 10mm), mu rotary tables (Laue angle rocking curve), sample slits, inserted with either pico motors or stepper mujacks are now available. Using this approach an integrated "all in one" experimental station was designed for X-ray microscopy beamlines, like the scanning X-ray microscope for ID21, (10 sub-micron axes operated at 10-6mbars). Other versions are currently being developed for micro-fluorescence beamlines or post monochromators. The development programme has benefited greatly from the presence of the ESRF precision engineering laboratory (PEL), which allowed high quality metrology measurements to be performed on both the prototype and the final systems.

This paper presents an overview of vacuum and engineering for particle accelerators. There are about 15 000 particle accelerators presently in operation worldwide. Those mentioned here are large facilities for which vacuum is considered for its main aspects:what vacuum definition is involved through gas interaction, beam losses and decay process;what pumping engineering principle used and what are the current trends;basic engineering of materials, joining and assembling processes; andapplication of technological know-how and how it is shared between industry and laboratories. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.