Home > Products > kSA 400 > Software - Specifications - Acquisition Modes

The kSA 400 analytical RHEED system has evolved over the past 12 years to be an extremely powerful analytical RHEED tool. The kSA 400 software has too many features and capabilities to be listed here. What we list below is a summary of the most prominent features and capabilities.

Computer-controlled, user-selectable CCD exposure control, to be applied to any data acquisition mode.

Both static and time-resolved data acquisition and analysis.

Acquisition modes:

1. Single Image Mode
Acquires single images for quantitative static analysis and archiving.

2. Multiple Image Mode
Acquires a user-selected number of diffraction images sequentially for quantitative analysis and archiving. Images may be acquired in real-time to system RAM (up to the limit of physical memory) or may be stored directly to hard disk.

3. Focus Mode
Displays real-time line profiles, surface plots, and contour plots on user-defined regions of the diffraction pattern, allowing for easy electron gun focusing and alignment without having to save data.

4. Scan Mode
An arbitrary number of lines and windows of the incoming diffraction pattern are monitored concurrently, yielding time-resolved, simultaneous intensity oscillation (growth rate determination), lattice spacing, and coherence length determination. The lines can be of any length and orientation (within the bounds of the image), and the windows can be rectangles of any size.

5. Movie Mode
Acquire complete image movies, with the capability to playback, analyze, and run Scan Mode on the movie. With acquired movies, the movie effectively becomes a built-in video cassette recorder and acts as a second acquisition source (in addition to the camera.).
click here to see a sample movie

6. Interactive Accumulation Mode
Allows continuous display of a real-time summed image, i.e. “interactive accumulation” mode. Useful for monitoring build-up of system noise, or monitoring pattern shifts with a single image.

All windows may be set for optional tracking feature. If tracking is set, the window repositions its center on the brightest portion of the diffraction streak/spot. Alternately, the tracking may be performed on the centroid position of the window. The position of the peak intensity/centroid intensity is recorded for each incoming image during data acquisition.

All acquisition modes allow the user to select the on-chip integration time and whether a background subtraction should be performed. This is useful when it is desirable to remove the contribution of vacuum chamber light to the diffraction image. For time-resolved acquisition modes, a delay time between image acquisition, accurate to 0.01 sec, may be selected.