EMIL
EMIL Energy Materials In-Situ Laboratory Berlin at BESSY II
The Energy Materials In-situ Laboratory Berlin (EMIL) was established at the BESSY II synchrotron light source by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH (HZB), the Fritz-Haber Institute of the Max-Planck Society, and the Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion.
EMIL is a unique infrastructure designed to allow for in-system, in-situ, and operando X-ray analysis of an unprecedented range of materials and devices for energy conversion and storage. The laboratory combines sample preparation, treatment and synthesis facilities on semi-industrial R&D standard scale with synchrotron-based characterization techniques exploiting the unique wide X-ray energy range from 80 eV to 10 keV provided by the EMIL beamline.
EMIL offers a very flexible platform for material synthesis and characterization and allows easy integration of new deposition tools that are mandatory to tackle future scientific challenges in energy material and device development.
The sample preparation, treatment, and treatment facilities include a highly flexible 8-source magnetron sputter system, a cluster tool that combines [plasma-enhanced] chemical vapor deposition ([PE]CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), and reactive ion etching (RIE), an atomic layer deposition (ALD) system, R&D type organic and e-beam evaporators, an atomic hydrogen source, (low energy) ion guns and a vacuum-compatible high-pressure reactor chamber. Along with a fully equipped chemistry laboratory and a clean room this offers extensive sample preparation and modification options. Note that all vacuum based deposition tools are connected via an ultra-high vacuum (UHV) “backbone” with the majority of the UHV based X-ray analytics. This enables the realization of in-system experiments, i.e. sample preparation and treatment is performed in the same (interconnected) vacuum system as the sample characterization, which avoids the exposure of to be studied sample surfaces to ambient conditions preventing undesired oxidation and contamination.
The EMIL beamline structure and the interaction points that are available are schematically presented in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Schematic presentation of the “two-color” EMIL beamline and the served interaction points
The U17 and UE48 undulators provide “two colors” of highly brilliant irradiation: tender/hard X-rays (presented in blue in Figure 1) and soft X-rays (presented in red).
While the three interaction points located in the EMIL laboratory building (SISSY I, SISSY II, and CAT) can receive soft and tender/hard x-rays, the additional interaction points on the experimental floor of BESSY II (STXM and PINK) exclusively use soft x-rays and hard x-rays, respectively, for their investigations. Figure 2 shows the layout of the EMIL facility.
Figure 2 Schematic presentation of the infrastructure located in the EMIL building or on the experimental floor of BESSY II. The stars indicate the location of the five interaction points of the EMIL “two-color” beamline.
The end stations at the different interaction points offer a complementary suite of ultra-high vacuum but also in-situ, near-ambient, and atmospheric pressure soft and hard X-ray analysis methods, such as: photoelectron spectroscopy (PES), hard X-ray PES (HAXPES), near-ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (NAP-XPS), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM). Complementary off-synchrotron analytics add laboratory-based XPS and UV-excited PES (UPS), inverse photoelectron spectroscopy (IPES), X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), light and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), profilometry, 4-point probe resistance measurements, thin film analysis (TFA), and UV-VIS photometry to the toolchest of techniques offered to the user community. Figure 3 illustrates the complementary probing depths of the synchrotron-based X-ray analytics available at EMIL that allows for non-destructively acquiring depth-dependent information of the chemical, electronic, and structural properties of a stack of functional layers typical for modern energy conversion and storage devices.
Figure 3 analytical X-ray techniques at EMIL. The different information depths can be exploited to get depth dependent information of a layer stack of different functional materials as often present in modern energy conversion and storage devices.