High performance temperature controlled UHV sample holder.

A requirement of many surface science studies is the capability to alter a sample temperature in a controlled mode. Sample preparation procedures such as heating or cooling ramps, high temperature spikes, fast annealing, or simply maintaining a sample at a very high, or very low, temperature are common. To address these issues, we describe the design and the construction of a multipurpose sample holder. Key points of this design are operation in an extended temperature range from liquid nitrogen (LN₂) temperature to ∼1300 K, temperature control during heating and cooling, low thermal inertia with rates up to 50 K s^-1 (heating) and -20 K s^-1 (cooling), and small heated volume to minimize background problems in thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS) spectra. With this design the sample can be flash heated from LN₂ temperature to 1300 K and cooled down again in less than 100 s. This sample holder was mounted and tested in a multitechnique apparatus and adds a large number of sample preparation procedures as well as TDS to the list of already available surface analysis techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]