Real-time, High-throughput, Coherent X-ray Microscopy: from Large-Scale Installations to Tabletop Device

Introduction

Recent advances in Coherent X-ray Microscopy opened new exciting avenues for 2D/3D imaging, allowing us to visualize deformations in batteries and solar cells during charge migration, magnetic topologies, catalysts pollution, transistors fabrication defects, and neuron activity. These emerging applications are expected to offer significant growth opportunities to market players in the coming years, complementing the possibilities offered by optical and electron-based microscopy methods.

Current Challenges

However, the expansion of this technology is currently hindered by its availability at facility-scale installations, where implementations are expensive and limit accessibility to a highly-specialized community.

Project Overview

In ULTRAIMAGE (851154), we tackled the challenge by scaling this technology to a tabletop device while retaining flexibility and complementary facility-scale performances. Specifically, we prototyped a coherent XUV microscope which offers the following advantages:

1. Femtosecond time- and Ångstrom-to-nanometer spatial resolution.
2. Exquisite material composition and height contrast, through amplitude and phase.
3. Self-diagnostic capabilities of aberrations and misalignments.
4. Quantitative, multimodal, non-destructive imaging.

Future Goals

HYPER aims towards the next step of R&I, increasing robustness, throughput, speed, and availability to the public while retaining cost-effectiveness. Key to this advancement is:

1. Implementation of beamline-style, real-time diagnostics of intensity, spectrum, and wavefront of the illumination.
2. Use of code parallelization, deep learning, and fast XUV detection technology.

Accessibility and Impact

Accessibility to a broad range of stakeholders and end users, and the translation to market of the consolidated technology, will be deployed through a strategic network of academe and industry partners. HYPER will foster broad, unprecedented understanding of functionality at the nanoscale, vital to the design of next-generation optoelectronics and biomedical devices.