Thin conductive diamond films as beam intensity monitors for soft x-ray beamlines

Quantitative analysis of X-ray absorption and dichroism data requires knowledge of the beamline photon flux during the measurements. We show that thin conductive (B-doped) diamond thin films can be an alternative to the widely used gold meshes for monitoring the beam intensity of soft X-ray beamlines in situ. Limited by the carbon extended x-ray absorption fine structure oscillations, the diamond films become applicable beginning from about 600 eV photon energy, where the important transition metal edges and the rare-earth edges are found. The 100 nm and 250 nm thick free-standing diamond films were grown and tested against standard gold meshes in real-life dichroism experiments performed at beamline ID08 of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Grenoble, France. Quantitative agreement was found between the two experimental data sets. The films feature an extremely high transmission of about 90% and, at the same time, yield a sufficiently strong and clean reference signal. Furthermore, the thin films do not affect the shape of the transmitted beam. X-rays passing mesh-type monitors are subject to diffraction effects, which widen the beam and become particularly disturbing for small beamsizes in the micrometer range.