WHAT: First C 1s spectro-ptychography:

Prior to this research, there were no reports of X-ray ptychography at the carbon K-edge, to the best of our knowledge. The reason is the typical CCD cameras used for soft X-ray ptychography have slow image transfer rates (1Mb/s) and have limited sensitivity to X-rays with energies lower than 500 eV. This research used a new generation of scientific Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (sCMOS) X-ray camera (Tucsen Dhyana) for imaging, spectroscopy and linear dichroism ptychographic measurements at the carbon K-edge. The figure shows phase and amplitude signals and associated linear dichroism from carbon nanotubes derived fromthe ptychographic measurements (click on figure for more details). Relative to STXM, ptychography provides both improved spatial resolution and improved image quality. Ptychography at the carbon K-edge offers unique opportunities to perform high resolution spectromicroscopy on organic materials important in medicine, biology, environmental science and energy materials.

Publication: N. Mille, H. Yuan, J. Vijayakumar, S. Stanescu, S. Swaraj, K. Desjardins, V. Favre-Nicolin, R. Belkhou & A.P. Hitchcock, Ptychography at the carbon K-edge, Communication Materials 3 (2022) 8. doi://10.1038/s43246-022-00232-8