10 Years Incoatec - Milestones in the Development of Modern X-ray Optics

T. Samtleben

Incoatec GmbH, Max-Planck-Strasse 2, 21502 Geesthacht, Germany

In 2012, the first century of crystallography will be celebrated all over the world. Additional to that, we too have quite a remarkable event: the first decade of Incoatec.

Back in 2002, two scientists founded Incoatec as a spin-off of the HZG (former GKSS Research Center) in a joint venture with Bruker AXS, starting up with just 4 employees. Today Incoatec has 40 employees, a yearly revenue of about 6 million Euro and beyond 250 Incoatec Microfocus Sources IµS sold in the world.

This is an occasion, in which we would like to take the chance to look back in time, even beyond the year of our foundation to the beginning of modern x-ray optics and pass the milestones in the development of x-ray optics and sources.

Modern microfocus X-ray sources define the state-of-the-art for a number of applications such as protein crystallography and small-angle scattering in the home lab. These sources have small anode spot sizes of 50 µm or smaller. They are usually combined with multilayer mirrors as beam-shaping devices that image the source spot onto the sample position, magnified to a suitable size, and deliver a parallel or focused monochromatic beam.

Microfocusing rotating anode systems deliver flux densities in the range of 10¹¹ photons/s/mm² at power loads of up to 20 kW/mm² when combined with synthetic multilayer mirrors. However, these sources are expensive and need regular and sometimes time-consuming maintenance.

Low power microfocus sealed tube sources such as the Incoatec Microfocus Source “IµS” represent an interesting low-maintenance alternative to rotating anode generators. Power loads of several kW/mm² in anode spot sizes below 50 µm deliver a small and highly brilliant beam. The IµS delivers a flux well above 10⁸ photons/s in a small spot in the 100 µm range and is available for Cu, Ag and Mo. Since 2006 more than 250 IµS were sold for a large variety of applications in diffractometry for biology, chemistry, physics and material science.