ANKA (abbreviation for „Angströmquelle Karlsruhe“) is a

synchrotron A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator, descended from the cyclotron, in which the accelerating particle beam travels around a fixed closed-loop path. The strength of the magnetic field which bends the particle beam i ...

light source facility at the

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; ) is both a German public research university in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, and a research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 when the University of Karlsruhe (), founde ...

(KIT) in

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( ; ; ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, after its capital Stuttgart a ...

, Germany. The KIT runs ANKA as a national synchrotron light source and as a large scale user facility for the international science community. Being a large scale machine of the performance category LK II of the Helmholtz Association (

Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres The Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres () is the largest scientific organisation in Germany. It is a union of 18 scientific-technical and biological-medical research centers. The official mission of the Association is "solving the g ...

), ANKA is part of a national and European infrastructure offering research services to scientific and commercial users for their purposes in research and development. The facility was opened to external users in 2003.

History

In 1997, the decision was formed to realize the project of building the large scale facility ANKA on the premises of the former Research Center Karlsruhe. By the end of 1998, the outer structure of ANKA was erected, and already in 1999, the first

electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...

s were inducted into the

storage ring A storage ring is a type of circular particle accelerator in which a continuous or pulsed particle beam may be kept circulating, typically for many hours. Storage of a particular particle depends upon the mass, momentum, and usually the charge o ...

. After a few more years of machine and laboratory development, in March 2003 ANKA opened its doors for users from the science community and industry, initially featuring seven

beamline In accelerator physics, a beamline refers to the trajectory of the beam of particles, including the overall construction of the path segment (guide tubes, diagnostic devices) along a specific path of an accelerator facility. This part is either ...

s: six analytical beamlines and one for the generation of microstructures using

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the miscibility, immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by ...

. Since then further improvements and extensions were continuously developed and implemented: Currently 15 beamlines are in operation, three more are in the process of installation. The machine itself saw the implementation of several updated generations of its insertion devices (

undulator An undulator is an insertion device from high-energy physics and usually part of a larger installation, a synchrotron storage ring, or it may be a component of a free electron laser. It consists of a periodic structure of dipole magnets. These ca ...

s and wigglers) that were in part developed at ANKA. Moreover, a fully developed infrastructure supports users at ANKA, as for example fully equipped user apartments on the premises of the KIT Campus North can be booked by external ANKA users.

Technical Details

ANKA features a storage ring with a circumference of 110.4 m (120.7 yards) that stores electrons at the energy of 2.5 GeV. For this purpose, electrons (90 keV) are generated by a

triode A triode is an electronic amplifier, amplifying vacuum tube (or ''thermionic valve'' in British English) consisting of three electrodes inside an evacuated glass envelope: a heated Electrical filament, filament or cathode, a control grid, grid ...

and preaccelerated to 500 MeV via a “Racetrack Microtron” (53 MeV) and a booster. The actual working energy is finally reached in the storage ring, where the electrons are now spinning at almost the

speed of light The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant exactly equal to ). It is exact because, by international agreement, a metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time i ...

. The storage ring contains an

ultra-high vacuum Ultra-high vacuum (often spelled ultrahigh in American English, UHV) is the vacuum regime characterised by pressures lower than about . UHV conditions are created by pumping the gas out of a UHV chamber. At these low pressures the mean free path of ...

of 10⁻⁹ mbar. The synchrotron light is thereby generated by the constant deflection of 16 magnets that keep the electrons focused in the center of the tube. In addition to that, wigglers and undulators – specialized magnet configurations with alternating straight and reverse polarity – are used to deflect the electrons into a sinus-curve-like course on which they emit synchrotron radiation. A special feature of the ANKA synchrotron configuration is the super conducting SCU15 undulator that was – as its predecessor SCU14 – co-developed at the ANKA facility. This new undulator does not only generate synchrotron light of enhanced brilliance, but also a much more variable spectrum of radiation easily adjustable to the respective research requirements.

ANKA beamlines and their applications

Imaging methods

;IMAGE: Use of X-rays for imaging procedures in 2D- and 3D-fields, static as well as dynamic – in the state of installation ;MPI-MF: Conducted by the

Max-Planck-Institute The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...

for Intelligent Systems, Specialized on

in situ is a Latin phrase meaning 'in place' or 'on site', derived from ' ('in') and ' ( ablative of ''situs'', ). The term typically refers to the examination or occurrence of a process within its original context, without relocation. The term is use ...

analyses of interfaces and

thin film A thin film is a layer of materials ranging from fractions of a nanometer ( monolayer) to several micrometers in thickness. The controlled synthesis of materials as thin films (a process referred to as deposition) is a fundamental step in many ...

s ;NANO: High definition in-situ X-ray

diffraction Diffraction is the deviation of waves from straight-line propagation without any change in their energy due to an obstacle or through an aperture. The diffracting object or aperture effectively becomes a secondary source of the Wave propagation ...

– in the final phase of installation ;PDIFF: Analysis using the Debye-Scherrer-

Powder diffraction Powder diffraction is a scientific technique using X-ray, neutron, or electron diffraction on powder or microcrystalline samples for structural characterization of materials. An instrument dedicated to performing such powder measurements is ca ...

(examination and identification of crystalline substances in powdered samples ;SCD: Analysis of X-ray diffraction on

single crystal In materials science, a single crystal (or single-crystal solid or monocrystalline solid) is a material in which the crystal lattice of the entire sample is continuous and unbroken to the edges of the sample, with no Grain boundary, grain bound ...

s ;TOPO-TOMO: Topography, micro

radiology Radiology ( ) is the medical specialty that uses medical imaging to diagnose diseases and guide treatment within the bodies of humans and other animals. It began with radiography (which is why its name has a root referring to radiation), but tod ...

and micro

tomography Tomography is imaging by sections or sectioning that uses any kind of penetrating wave. The method is used in radiology, archaeology, biology, atmospheric science, geophysics, oceanography, plasma physics, materials science, cosmochemistry, ast ...

using

polychromatic Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery, or sculpture in multiple colors. When looking at artworks and a ...

light and X-rays

Spectroscopy

;FLUO: X-ray

fluorescence Fluorescence is one of two kinds of photoluminescence, the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. When exposed to ultraviolet radiation, many substances will glow (fluoresce) with colore ...

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectro ...

, non-destructive qualitative and quantitative identification of the elemental composition of a sample ;INE: Installed and conducted by the KIT Institute for Nuclear Waste Disposal for the sake of

actinide The actinide () or actinoid () series encompasses at least the 14 metallic chemical elements in the 5f series, with atomic numbers from 89 to 102, actinium through nobelium. Number 103, lawrencium, is also generally included despite being part ...

-research ;IR1:

Infrared spectroscopy Infrared spectroscopy (IR spectroscopy or vibrational spectroscopy) is the measurement of the interaction of infrared radiation with matter by absorption, emission, or reflection. It is used to study and identify chemical substances or functio ...

and infrared

ellipsometry Ellipsometry is an optical technique for investigating the dielectric properties (complex refractive index or dielectric function) of thin films. Ellipsometry measures the change of polarization upon reflection or transmission and compares it ...

including

terahertz radiation Terahertz radiation – also known as submillimeter radiation, terahertz waves, tremendously high frequency (THF), T-rays, T-waves, T-light, T-lux or THz – consists of electromagnetic waves within the International Telecommunicat ...

;IR2:

and

infrared microscopy Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view subjects too small to be seen with the naked eye (objects that are not within the resolution range of the normal eye). There are three well-known branches of microscopy: optical, el ...

including

;SUL-X:

Absorption Absorption may refer to: Chemistry and biology *Absorption (biology), digestion **Absorption (small intestine) *Absorption (chemistry), diffusion of particles of gas or liquid into liquid or solid materials *Absorption (skin), a route by which su ...

, fluorescence- and diffraction analysis as part of the synchrotron environmental laboratory ;UV-CD12: Conducted by the KIT Institute for Biological Interfaces, UV-

circular dichroism Circular dichroism (CD) is dichroism involving circular polarization, circularly polarized light, i.e., the differential Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption of left- and right-handed light. Left-hand circular (LHC) and right-hand ci ...

-spectroscopy (structural analysis of biological substances) ;WERA: Soft X-ray analysis conducted by the KIT Institute for Solid-State Physics ;XAS: X-ray absorption spectroscopy,

XANES X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES), also known as near edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS), is a type of absorption spectroscopy that indicates the features in the X-ray absorption spectra ( XAS) of condensed matter due to the ...

(chemical composition of a sample) and EXAFS (Number, distance and type of neighboring atom (also in non-crystalline form)

Microfabrication

;LIGA I, II, III: Deep X-ray lithography according to the

LIGA Liga (Spanish and Portuguese: ''League'') or LIGA may refer to: Sports Basketball * Liga ACB, men's professional basketball league in Spain * Liga Femenina de Baloncesto, women's professional basketball league in Spain Football Latin Ame ...

-procedure developed at the KIT. The three beamlines differ regarding the level of available energy

Access for scientific users

Besides the scientists at ANKA and IPS that contribute to the development of the synchrotron and its components, external users in particular have the opportunity to use the radiation generated at ANKA for their own research projects. Users of the international science community are coordinated by ANKA's user office. Twice a year, proposals for beamtime at ANKA are collected via an online application procedure. The actual beamtime is then allocated by an international scientific committee that evaluates the submitted proposals. On the premises of KIT Campus North a guest house grants the accommodation of external users for the time of their project at ANKA. More information on the allocation of beamtime can be found on the web pages of the user office.

External links

Official Website

User office

Website ANKA Commercial Services
{{DEFAULTSORT:Angstromquelle Karlsruhe Synchrotron radiation facilities