X-ray spectromicroscopy of polymers and tribological surfaces at beamline X1A at the NSLS

We provide a general overview of microspectroscopy and spectromicroscopy for materials characterization at beamline X1A at the national synchrotron light source (NSLS). Two instruments, the scanning transmission X-ray microscope (STXM) and scanning photoemission microscope (SPEM), are available. The STXM has been able to provide a spatial resolution of better than 50 nm for several years and near edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy is performed in transmission from thin samples at an energy resolution of typically 0.3 eV at the carbon K-edge. Numerous applications in polymer science and biology have been performed to date. We restrict our review to polymer science applications and present new results of several polymer systems. The SPEM has a spatial resolution of about 250 nm in routine operation and was recently upgraded with a hemispherical sector analyzer to improve the data throughput. We present the latest SPEM results, which were generated from a tribological sample.