A facility for x-ray computed microtomography (CMT) is operating as a national user facility for earth and environmental sciences research on the bending magnet beamline at the GeoSoilEnviroCARS sector at the Advanced Photon Source (APS). The APS bending magnet has a critical energy of 20 keV, and thus provides high flux at photon energies up to 100 keV, making it well suited to imaging a wide range of earth materials up to several cm in size. The beamline is equipped with a Si (111) double-crystal monochromator covering the energy range from 5 to 70 keV with beam sizes up to 50mm wide and 6mm high. The transmitted x-rays are imaged with a single crystal YAG scintillator, a microscope objective and a 1300x1030 pixel 12-bit 5MHz CCD detector. The maximum spatial resolution is under 2 microns in both the transmission radiographs and the reconstructed slices. Data collection times for full 3-D datasets range from 5-60 minutes. This facility has been used for a wide range of studies, including multiphase fluids in porous media, high-pressure studies, meteorites, and hyper-accumulating plants.
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