Ultra-High Vacuum preparation chamber with in-situ BLS and SMOKE

A new UHV chamber has been set up at GHOST laboratory, specially designed to be directly interfaced with the optical table for in-situ BLS and SMOKE measurements and to allow the variation of both incidence angle of light and the in-plane angle of the applied magnetic field, with field intensity up to 6 kOe. As shown in the figures, it is a compact chamber mounted on top of a mobile frame, equipped with standard UHV tools, such as e-beam evaporators, quartz micro-balance, LEED-Auger apparatus, RHEED, load-lock system. A horizontal XYZ manipulator, with primary and secondary rotations, is used to position the evaporated film at the end of the so called BLS tube which is a protuberance about 20 cm long and 10 cm in diameter, terminating with a glass viewport for BLS and SMOKE measurements . The temperature of the specimen can be varied in the range 110-1400 K. The whole frame can be translated inserting the BLS tube within the poles of an external four-inches electromagnet, just aside the BLS optical table. The first results obtained by this apparatus have been recently published.

                    Top view                                                                                               Front view

                   Sample holder