A sub-micrometer resolution hard X-ray microprobe system of BL8C at Pohang Light Source

A microprobe system has been installed on the nanoprobe/XAFS beamline (BL8C) at PLS-II, South Korea. Owing to the reproducible switch of the gap of the in-vacuum undulator (IVU), the intense and brilliant hard X-ray beam of an IVU can be used in X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray absorption fine-structure (XAFS) experiments. For high-spatial-resolution microprobe experiments a Kirkpatrick-Baez mirror system has been used to focus the millimeter-sized X-ray beam to a micrometer-sized beam. The performance of this system was examined by a combination of micro-XRF imaging and micro-XAFS of a beetle wing. These results indicate that the microprobe system of the BL8C can be used to obtain the distributions of trace elements and chemical and structural information of complex materials.