A pinhole smallhyphen;angle xhyphen;ray scattering (SAXS) instrument was constructed at the SUNY X3A2 beamline, National Synchrotron Light Source, Brookhaven National Laboratory. The three pinholes were mounted in a thickhyphen;walled stainless steel pipe andprealignedby using a portable laser source and a chargehyphen;coupled device (CCD) area detector. After the prealignment, incorporation of the collimator to the synchrotron xhyphen;ray source required only maximization of the incident xhyphen;ray intensity passing through the pinholes, which could be done easily by using a scintillation counter after proper attenuation. The entire synchrotron SAXS instrument setup took only a few hours even without stepping motor control for the pinhole collimator unit. By combining this collimator with a CCDhyphen;based xhyphen;ray area detector which could be assembled by using commercially available components, the SAXS instrument showed good performance for structural scales up to an order of 100 nm. The CCDhyphen;based xhyphen;ray area detector used a computerhyphen; (or manually) controlled intensified unit with a variable gain setting in order to accommodate the changing xhyphen;ray flux and to protect the detector from over exposure, a necessary feature for operation of an area detector at a synchrotron light source.
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