Daisuke Wakabayashi, Ryoma Kataoka, Hirokazu Tanaka, Naokatsu Kaneko, Chiharu Narita, Yoshinori Uchida, Takeharu Mori, Haruno Ishii, Takashi Kosuge, Hiroaki Nitani, Akio Toyoshima, Takashi Kikuchi, Kazuhiko Mase, Daiki Kido, Yasuhiro Niwa, Masao Kimura, Kaoruho Sakata, Kenta Amemiya, Noriko Usami, Kenichi Ozawa, Hironori Nakao, Nobutaka Shimizu, Toshihiro Tahara, Hiroshi Miyauchi, Masashi Arita, Hiroshi Iwayama, Hiroshi Ota, Wenxiong Zhang, Hisao Kiuchi, Kenya Shimada, Satoshi Kera, Yoshihisa Harada, Takashi Obina, Noriyuki Igarashi, Nobumasa Funamori
We report the development and initial applications of the multi-functional research and development beamlines BL-11A and BL-11B at the Photon Factory, which are designed to enable simultaneous use of hard and soft x-rays. The two beamlines share a common bending-magnet source and deliver independently monochromatized hard- and soft-x-ray beams that can be focused onto the same sample position in a downstream experimental hutch, providing a versatile platform for two-beam experiments in which hard and soft x-rays can serve as pump and/or probe beams in various combinations. As proof-of-concept demonstrations, we performed probe-probe measurements of water electrolysis on a cobalt electrocatalyst and pump-probe measurements of x-ray-induced dissociation of a caged compound. In the probe-probe scheme, hard- and soft-x-ray absorption spectroscopy was carried out simultaneously to track correlated changes in the catalyst oxidation state and oxygen-related intermediates during the oxygen evolution reaction. In the pump-probe scheme, chemical changes in 2-iodosobenzoic acid induced by hard-x-ray excitation at the iodine L3 edge were monitored using soft-x-ray absorption spectroscopy at the oxygen K edge.