Development of slurry targets for high repetition-rate XFEL experiments

TL;DR

This paper introduces slurry targets designed for high repetition-rate XFEL experiments, enabling rapid target replenishment and consistent shock compression results, facilitating advanced material studies under extreme conditions.

Contribution

It presents a novel slurry target fabrication method suitable for high-repetition-rate XFEL experiments, demonstrating its effectiveness through shock-compression and X-ray diffraction studies.

Findings

NaCl-slurry samples show pressure, density, and temperature states consistent with single-crystal NaCl.

Slurry targets can be fashioned into extruded ribbons for rapid experimental cycles.

The method supports high-repetition-rate operation in XFEL studies.

Abstract

Combining an x-ray free electron laser (XFEL) with high power laser drivers enables the study of phase transitions, equation-of-state, grain growth, strength, and transformation pathways as a function of pressure to 100s GPa along different thermodynamic compression paths. Future high-repetition rate laser operation will enable data to be accumulated at >1 Hz which poses a number of experimental challenges including the need to rapidly replenish the target. Here, we present a combined shock-compression and X-ray diffraction study on vol% epoxy(50)-crystalline grains(50) (slurry) targets, which can be fashioned into extruded ribbons for high repetition-rate operation. For shock-loaded NaCl-slurry samples, we observe pressure, density and temperature states within the embedded NaCl grains consistent with observations for shock-compressed single-crystal NaCl.