A VME‐based photodiode array system for energy dispersive extended x‐ray absorption fine structure

A VME‐based control and data acquisition system has been constructed for time resolved energy dispersive extended x‐ray absorption fine structure. The system is discussed from initial concept to installation on the Daresbury SRS. The system performance is presented in detail together with examples of test data. Current operational characteristics are a 2‐ms readout time for one scan of 512 pixels, at 16 bits resolution. Accumulation of 65 000 scans in a single frame and a total of 64 frames stored in memory. The system has been designed to run at rates of 0.2 ms per scan and a burst mode allowing 128 single scan frames to be accumulated.