Multipurpose soft-material SAXS/WAXS/GISAXS beamline at SPring-8

Scientific and engineering research on soft materials requires precise structural analysis to understand their hierarchical and fluctuating nature. A new beamline, the BL03XU frontier soft-material beamline, that is dedicated to scattering experiments on soft materials was recently installed at the third-generation synchrotron facility, SPring-8, in Japan. The BL03XU uses an in-vacuum undulator, and the photon flux of the obtained X-ray can reach 10 13 photons sec −1 , with an energy resolution of Δ E / E ≈2 × 10 −4 at 12.4 keV. The BL03XU has two experimental hutches: a front one that is used for grazing-incidence scattering experiments and a second one for transmitting scattering experiments, which enables simultaneous small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering. The present paper introduces details about the instrument and some of the first scattering data measured at BL03XU, which reveals its cutting-edge design and high level of performance. A new beamline called the frontier soft-material beamline at BL03XU for soft materials was recently installed at SPring-8, using an in-vacuum undulator. The photon flux can reach 10 13 photons sec −1 and the energy resolution is about 10 −4 at an energy of 12.4 keV. The present paper introduces details on the instrumental and some of the first scattering data measured at BL03XU, revealing its cutting-edge design and high performance.