Glass polycapillary optics are shown to be easy to use focusing optics for bending magnet XAS stations. These achromatic optics have acceptances of several mm horizontally and vertically, while their angular acceptances can be matched to the source divergence by the design of the polycapillary. A polycapillary half-lens based focusing system was successfully tested for transmission and fluorescence μ-XAS at the DUBBLE beamline (BM26A, ESRF) and the feasibility of confocal μ-XANES in fluorescence mode is presented.

Transmission efficiencies of 25–45% with flux density gain factors of about 2000 and beam sizes of 10–20 μm were obtained in the 7–14 keV energy range. Although the polycapillary optic has a smoothly changing energy dependent transmission efficiency, the amplitude and shape of the EXAFS oscillations are not influenced by this. The focusing properties of the polycapillary lens cancel slight vertical motions of the incoming X-ray beam, resulting in a fixed μ-beam spot in the focal plane, making polycapillaries also suitable optic in combination with a non-fixed exit monochromator.

In addition, by mounting a second polycapillary half-lens in front of an energy dispersive detector, a confocal set-up is obtained, which restricts the part of the sample seen by the detector to a microscopic volume of about 20×20×15 μm³ at the Fe K absorption edge for example.