A compact-rigid multi-analyser for energy and angle filtering of high-resolution X-ray experiments. Part 1. Principles and implementation

Diffraction and spectroscopy instruments using a filtering process with several analyser crystals have existed for about 30 years at synchrotron radiation sources, but they are difficult to use on laboratory sources. Several diffraction multi-filtering systems for powder diffraction experiments have been studied and optimized, in order to show the relevance, simplicity and efficiency of their implementation. Optical filter systems containing one or many diffracting elements, precisely positioned in a rigid manner on a logarithmic spiral surface and having a stability that allows high resolution and high sensitivity to powder diffraction experiments, have been developed. After having tested prototypes with various geometries, we present in particular the realization of a small rigid-compact multi-analyser comb that allows 20–50 measurements on synchrotron radiation sources to be filtered in parallel, but also and especially that can be adapted on laboratory X-ray sources (Ag Kα(1)) to increase by an order of magnitude the intensities and resolutions of the measurements. Such a rigid-compact multi-analyser block can advantageously be associated with ‘photon-counting’ 1D and 2D detectors in order to drastically improve the detection thresholds of powder diffraction measurements to better than 0.1%, which allows the detection/quantification/analysis of minor phases in studies of ‘real’ complex materials.