title: Development of a multipurpose vacuum chamber for serial optical and diffraction experiments with free electron laser radiation.
abstract: In this paper we present a development of a multipurpose vacuum chamber which primal function is to be used in pump/probe experiments with free electron laser (FEL) radiation. The chamber is constructed for serial diffraction and serial spectroscopy allowing a fast exchange of samples during the measurement process. For the fast exchange of samples, liquid jet systems are used. Both applications, utilizing soft x-ray FEL pulses as pump and optical laser pulses as probe and vice versa are documented. Experiments with solid samples as well as the liquid jet samples are presented. When working with liquid jets, a system of automatically refilled liquid traps for capturing liquids has been developed in order to ensure stable vacuum conditions. Differential pumping stages are placed in between the FEL beamline and the experimental chamber so that working pressure in the chamber can be up to four orders of magnitude higher than the pressure in the FEL beamline.
authors.affiliation: Department of Structural Dynamics of (Bio)chemical Systems, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, 37070 Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Rajkovic
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hallmann
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Grübel
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: More
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Quevedo
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Petri
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Techert
mesh_terms: D004583:Electrons; D004867:Equipment Design; D007834:Lasers; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D019904:Polymethyl Methacrylate / Q000737:chemistry; D011312:Pressure; D018030:Silver Compounds / Q000737:chemistry; D014618:Vacuum; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction / Q000295:instrumentation; D014965:X-Rays
chemical_list: D018030:Silver Compounds; D019904:Polymethyl Methacrylate