Reversing the flow of technology

La Trobe University physicists have reversed the traditional direction of technology flow by designing and building a highly sophisticated toroidal electron spectrometer and exporting it to Germany.

Laboratories at La Trobe and most other Australian universities house much highly complex apparatus imported from Germany.

Professors John Riley and Robert Leckey of the Department of Physics and their team have turned the tables with the shipping of their $1.5 million device to the Berlin Synchrotron Radiation Facility. On 12 March 2003 the toroidal spectrometer, which took two and a half years to complete in a basement laboratory at La Trobe University's Melbourne (Bundoora) campus, was packed in a special crate and airfreighted to Germany.

Professors Riley and Leckey and three other team members, Dr Len Broekman, Mr Eric Huwald and Mr Anton Tadich, accompanied the device to Berlin to install it and ensure it was working efficiently. They recently returned to Melbourne.

"The spectrometer was successfully installed in Berlin and we are very pleased with our first results from it," Professor Riley said.

Designed for angle resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, the La Trobe toroidal spectrometer determines the electronic properties of materials, using photons in the form of a light beam from a synchrotron source to eject electrons from a material, analysing the angle and speed at which individual electrons emerge from the material.

Built using a three year ARC $465,000 grant, since extended to six years, the toroidal spectrometer is a vastly upgraded version of a toroidal spectrometer that Professors Riley and Leckey designed and built at La Trobe in 1980. That instrument was the subject of the first international patent taken out by the university.

Electron spectrometers enable scientists to gain fundamental knowledge of the electronic, magnetic and other properties of technically important materials like silicon and other semi-conductors used in highly sophisticated electronic and optical devices.

La Trobe's new toroidal spectrometer contributes to the advance of electron spectroscopy because it analyses all electrons emitted in a given plane from a sample as well as sampling a range of energies simultaneously. Commercial spectrometers do not have the advantages of this parallel detection capability in both angle and energy.

They achieved this advanced capability by designing a 'wrap-around' or doughnut-shaped device that captures the electrons coming from a sample at all different angles in a plane and by arranging for a group of these electrons with a spread in energy to be detected at the same time.

The La Trobe team also made the castings for a second toroidal spectrometer that was shipped to the National Synchrotron Facility at Campinas, Brazil, where it is currently being completed.

After installing the spectrometer in Berlin, the La Trobe team remained for several weeks using their creation to examine the electronic properties of a copper-gold alloy and of zinc oxide.

In return for providing the toroidal spectrometer, the La Trobe team has access to synchrotron facilities at the Berlin facility but also anxiously awaits the completion of the Australian synchrotron project in 2007.