Institute Methods and Instrumentation for Synchrotron Radiation Research
Impurity level X-ray Absorption and Emission on Molecules and Materials with AXSYS
The aspect of impurity level detection of active centers in molecules and functional materials has remained a huge challenge for synchrotron based soft X-ray spectroscopy. The shift away from optical grating based spectral detection to ultracold milli-Kelvin superconducting bolometric calorimetry is a game changer with orders of magnitude increased detection efficiency. Together with Prof. Serena de Beer from the Max-Planck-Society and joint technology development with NIST in Boulder, Colorado the next generation of Transition Edge Sensor (TES) technology is fielded now to see with soft X-rays the impurity states in molecules and materials so far inaccessible.
![Cover Physical Chemistry](/media/media/forschung/ps/synchrotron-radiation-research/methods_instrumentation/cover-4/cover-physical-chemistry.jpg)
![TES - enlarged view](/media/media/forschung/ps/synchrotron-radiation-research/methods_instrumentation/cover-4/picture-website-tes.jpg)
The TES detector consists of an array of 250 superconducting sensors integrated in the microsnout device, where each sensor is connected to a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to measure the change of resistance of the sensor when a photon is absorbed. The detector is connected to a dilution refrigerator to reach the 54 milliKelvin operation temperature.