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Carbon contamination of a chromium-coated mirror was removed by exposure to oxygen activated with non-monochromated synchrotron radiation. Higher-order harmonics of the chromium-coated mirror are much smaller than those of a gold-coated mirror in the carbon K-edge region., Carbon-free chromium-coated optics are ideal in the carbon K-edge region (280–330 eV) because the reflectivity of first-order light is larger than that of gold-coated optics while the second-order harmonics (560–660 eV) are significantly suppressed by chromium L-edge and oxygen K-edge absorption. Here, chromium-, gold- and nickel-coated mirrors have been adopted in the vacuum ultraviolet and soft X-ray branch beamline BL-13B at the Photon Factory in Tsukuba, Japan. Carbon contamination on the chromium-coated mirror was almost completely removed by exposure to oxygen at a pressure of 8 × 10−2 Pa for 1 h under irradiation of non-monochromated synchrotron radiation. The pressure in the chamber recovered to the order of 10−7 Pa within a few hours. The reflectivity of the chromium-coated mirror of the second-order harmonics in the carbon K-edge region (560–660 eV) was found to be a factor of 0.1–0.48 smaller than that of the gold-coated mirror.

A novel design concept is presented for a variable-included-angle Monk-Gillieson mounting monochromator with a varied-line-spacing (VLS) plane grating, in which the grating is illuminated by converging X-rays. The energy resolution for a beamline with a typical undulator source is estimated by means of the ray-tracing method. It is shown that the source-size or slope-error limited resolution is achieved in a wide energy range by properly changing the included angle. Moreover, relatively high resolution is maintained even if one scans the photon energy with a fixed included angle, which is a great advantage over the previous VLS grating monochromator with diverging illumination on the grating. A design example for a bending-magnet beamline is also presented, indicating that the new design concept is valid even for high-emittance sources.

Carbon contamination of optics is a serious issue in all soft X-ray beamlines because it decreases the quality of experimental data, such as near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure, resonant photoemission and resonant soft X-ray emission spectra in the carbon K-edge region. Here an in situ method involving the use of oxygen activated by zeroth-order synchrotron radiation was used to clean the optics in a vacuum ultraviolet and soft X-ray undulator beamline, BL-13A at the Photon Factory in Tsukuba, Japan. The carbon contamination of the optics was removed by exposing them to oxygen at a pressure of 10(-1)-10(-4) Pa for 17-20 h and simultaneously irradiating them with zeroth-order synchrotron radiation. After the cleaning, the decrease in the photon intensity in the carbon K-edge region reduced to 2-5%. The base pressure of the beamline recovered to 10(-7)-10(-8) Pa in one day without baking. The beamline can be used without additional commissioning.

We report here the temperature-dependent unoccupied molecular orbitals (MO's) of C60 molecules adsorbed on a Si(001)-(2 × 1) surface measured using near edge x-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS). At 300 K, the NEXAFS spectrum reveals that the interaction between a 1.0 monolayer (ML) C60 film and a Si(001) surface is mainly the van der Waals force. After annealing the samples at 500 K, we observe an increment in the full-width at half-maximum of unoccupied MO's, which indicates the change of the interaction. Moreover, the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) shifts to the higher photon energy side and the intensity of the LUMO+1 relative to that of the LUMO+3 decreases in the NEXAFS spectrum. These results suggest that the strong interaction induced at 500 K has a covalent character, to which the LUMO+1 contributes.

The design and performance of a new soft X-ray beamline BL-11A at the Photon Factory (PF) are presented. A Hettrick-type grazing-incidence monochromator equipped with three varied-line-spacing plane gratings was designed and constructed at a bending-magnet source of the PF 2.5 GeV storage ring. An 800 lines mm−1 laminar grating produced by aspheric-wavefront holographic recording optics, as well as a mechanically ruled blazed one, were tested. A resolving power of more than 4500 was achieved at 400 eV with either grating, and ∼1010 photons s−1 are available at a resolving power of 2000. High photon flux enables low-concentration samples, such as surface adsorbates, to be studied. A simple scanning mechanism for a wide energy range is quite useful for EXAFS measurements on light elements such as C, N and O.