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kSA 400 - Leader in Analytical RHEED and LEED
Software - Specifications: General    

Contour and surface plots of GaAs (100) oscillations using kSA 400Digital movies: complete digital movie capability. Movies can be recorded directly to hard disk or other storage media. Stored movies can be played back and analyzed using all kSA acquisition and analysis tools. Scan Mode can be run on movie files, selecting the movie file as the acquisition source vs. selecting the camera as the acquisition source. VCR-style control allows easy, instant navigation through movie files. Any kSA 400 movie may now be exported to AVI movie format (.avi), allowing for easy viewing using common media players.

File conversion and export: image and graphics file conversion to several standard file formats, including .bmp, .tif, .gif, .wmf, .png, .eps, .txt and Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (.xls) file formats. Images and graphics may also be copied directly to the Windows clipboard and pasted into standard Windows applications like Microsoft Word.

Powerful IDL™ graphics: the IDL graphics and data processing language, developed by Research Systems, Inc. (www.rsinc.com), has been incorporated into the kSA 400, yielding extraordinary graphing and visualization power. 3D rendering, triple region plots, multiple data set display, interactive mouse rotation, and full plot customization are just a few of the new data visualization features.

Graphics editing: numerous image and graphics editing capabilities, including false coloring using preloaded or user-defined color palettes, label editing, font, grid, and tick mark editing, interactive 3D rotation and perspective, the ability to plot individual data point markers with varying symbols, and a data editor that allows direct editing of data associated with a graph.

External triggering: external trigger capability for triggering and synchronizing data acquisition at the occurrence of specific events, (e.g. at specific rotation angles during substrate rotation). Both input and output triggers are supported.

Enhanced real-time charts: real-time charts (RTCs) can be opened, closed, smoothed, resized, and rescaled during acquisition. Any window analysis parameter can be plotted, either on the x-axis or the y-axis.

Storing Regions on an Image: Associate a region for data acquisition with a specific spot on a RHEED pattern. The region box will then track that spot as the pattern moves.

Color Map: stores data in the same color as associated region box for easier post acquisition analysis.

Si (111) Rheed Pattern using kSA 400Multi-threaded video: multi-threaded video allows the on-screen video to be displayed with interactive camera integration, frame summation, and filtering in real-time or near real-time, while the user performs other kSA 400 operations.

Analog and digital I/O support: complete analog and digital I/O support for most data acquisition boards. Simultaneously monitor voltages from external sources (such as temperature probes) during image acquisition, or map image acquisition parameters (such as growth rate or lattice spacing) to analog or digital output channels.

Image and movie compression: the addition of lossless image and movie compression allows for on-the-fly or post acquisition compression. This applies to compression of images and movies taken with previous versions of the kSA 400 software. The “Zlib” routine used by k-Space typically compresses RHEED images and movies by a factor of 2 or greater.

(Optional) Multiple data sets: multiple data sets may now be generated from a single acquisition. The kSA 400 may be programmed to separate the data based on multiple gun settings and can automatically change these settings continuously during deposition so you acquire two data sets, one for each gun setting. Up to 32 separate sets of data may be acquired in a multiplexing mode with the Multiple Data Sets option.

Software trigger capability: you can monitor changes in the incoming video, and start the acquisition based on these changes. For example, you can monitor a region for the appearance of a reconstruction feature, and the software will not begin acquisition until this feature is detected.

Start/Stop trigger: an external signal input may be used to begin and end the acquisition. This is separate from the standard “external trigger” capability, which uses a trigger signal to grab each frame of the data acquisition.

Programmability: you can write your own image process filters, data processing filters, analysis routines, and real-time charts in the kSA 400. Using IDL™ (the Interactive Data Language), C-like programming procedures may be written using a standard text editor. These procedures are then compiled upon launch of the kSA 400 system, and the successfully compiled procedures become part of the kSA 400 application.

Networking capability: for sites desiring multiple users for data analysis and archiving, a network-capable software license is now possible. This allows multiple users to perform all kSA 400 functions, with the exception of data acquisition from a live video source.

GaAs (110) Rheed Pattern using kSA 400Firewire and USB camera support: the kSA 400 supports acquisition from IEEE-1394 (Firewire) and USB cameras.

Data and error logging: the kSA 400 has a user-selectable data and error logger, which allows for logging and trouble shooting of the operation of the kSA 400. The level of logging is user-selectable. Log files can be sent to k-Space for analysis and debugging if needed.

Real -time/near real-time surface, contour, and histogram charts: displays real-time surface, contour, and histogram charts as live video streams in, all while still acquiring data (Scan Mode) or simply displaying the incoming data (Focus Mode). Real-time or near real-time, will depend on your cpu speed and the size of the region of interest.

Double precision data storage: all calculated parameters are stored with double precision instead of single precision float for utmost accuracy. All generated data files (with the exception of image files) store values as double precision float as well.

Easy chart rescaling: simple x and y range rescaling using mouse positioning over the chart. Does away with the need to manually set x range and y range with numerical values. Note the rescaling automatically applies to any derived charts, automatically updating it based on the new data set in the rescaled chart.

Movie filters: you can trim your movies by cutting frames at the beginning or end, and skipping N frames throughout the movie to generate new, smaller movies.