Debye

The Debye beamline at SLS was funded by the ETH Council, PSI and EPFL with a Joint Strategic Initiative proposal entitled "Rapid Access X-ray Chemical and Structural Analysis at SLS" and is currently under construction.

First light was taken at Debye on the 19th September guiding the X-ray beam through the optics and achieving monochromatic beam in the experimental endstation. The Debye beamline will go into user operation in Autumn 2025 with the startup of SLS 2.

The envisioned Debye beamline will provide capabilities for real-time X-ray spectroscopies and diffraction under operating conditions. This new beamline for the chemistry and material science communities will provide access to state-of-the-art X-ray tools (XAS, XRD, SAXS, PDF) and infrastructure (reaction cells, potentiostat, mass spectrometer, reactive gases up to 60 bar) for high-throughput operando experiments. The heart of the beamline is the QEXAFS monochromator with an iteration of the highly successful monochromator installed at the SuperXAS beamline offering sub second X-ray absorption spectroscopy data. The design of the beamline has focused on a wide photon energy range of 4.5 to 60 keV (thanks to a 5 T magnet and a 2.7 GeV SLS 2.0 ring) and multiple operation modes such as monochromatic-beam or pink-beam and focused or partially unfocused beam promising to offer a unique platform at SLS for combined X-ray based analysis tools tailored to the specific needs of in situ and operando X-ray chemical analysis of functional materials.