ESCA Microscopy at ELETTRA: What it is like to perform spectromicroscopy experiments on a third generation synchrotron radiation source

We present ESCA Microscopy, the first X-ray microscopy beamline operating on ELETTRA, the third generation synchrotron radiation source in Trieste, Italy. ESCA Microscopy is an advanced user facility open to the international scientific community; its operation is based on the use of a Fresnel zone plate to demagnify to submicrometre dimensions the photon beam emitted by an undulator in the 200-1000 eV energy range. ESCA Microscopy was designed as a scanning photoemission microscope especially suited for surface analysis; it also operates in transmission mode and should find many applications in materials science, chemistry and physics. We describe here the beamline experimental setup and present some recent results obtained during the first months of operation. While so doing, we will outline certain spectroscopic aspects and point out some operational problems that are typical of scanning photoemission microscopy, a technique which should find in advanced sources such as ELETTRA the right conditions to achieve maturity. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.