Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HYPER (Real-time, High-throughput, Coherent X-ray Microscopy: from Large-Scale Installations to Tabletop Device)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2024-01-01 al 2025-06-30
Recent advances in Coherent X-ray Microscopy opened new exciting avenues for 2D/3D imaging, allowing to visualize deformations in batteries and solar cells during charge migration, magnetic topologies, catalysts pollution, transistors fabrication defects, 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. 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.
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 EUV microscope which offers the following advantages: (i) femtosecond time- and Ångstrom-to-nanometer spatial resolution; (ii) exquisite material composition and height contrast, through amplitude and phase; (iii) self-diagnostic capabilities of aberrations and misalignments; (iv) quantitative, multimodal, non-destructive imaging.
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: (i) implementation of beamline-style, real-time, diagnostics of intensity, spectrum, wavefront of the illumination; (ii) use of code parallelization, deep-learning, and fast EUV detection technology. 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.
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 EUV microscope which offers the following advantages: (i) femtosecond time- and Ångstrom-to-nanometer spatial resolution; (ii) exquisite material composition and height contrast, through amplitude and phase; (iii) self-diagnostic capabilities of aberrations and misalignments; (iv) quantitative, multimodal, non-destructive imaging.
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: (i) implementation of beamline-style, real-time, diagnostics of intensity, spectrum, wavefront of the illumination; (ii) use of code parallelization, deep-learning, and fast EUV detection technology. 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.
The activities performed in the context of HYPER aimed to release the first validated prototype of our ultrafast EUV microscope, through the achievement of its technical implementation and performances validation. Our system includes two complementary photon energy spectrometers that operate with minimum hindrance within the microscope chamber. Feasibility studies, technical parameters fine tuning, and efficiency predictive estimates were made through accurate ray-tracing simulations with the ShadowOui OrAnge SYnchrotron Suite (OASYS) software, in collaboration with HYPER strategic partners. We carried out an in-depth technology scouting of all spectrometers components, with a particular focus on the choice of actuation stages and on the fabrication of custom gratings characterized by high throughput and efficiency, and tailored to the technical specifications and scientific objectives of HYPER. Further assessment of the microscope performances was achieved with preliminary tests, yielding results which met our estimates, and currently underpinning publications in compliance with HYPER’s IPR strategy.
The capability of measuring in real-time the spectrum of the EUV source, in the same device where the microscopy is performed, can be harnessed to enhance the robustness of reconstructed images through advanced algorithms, or to resonantly image samples with chemical and elemental contrast. By exploiting the ground-breaking technical methods developed in ERC-StG ULTRAIMAGE and ERC-PoC HYPER, we validated a compact, coherent X-ray microscope, characterized by the following unique features: i) High robustness, high throughput, high speed, cost-effectiveness; ii) Femtosecond time- and Ångstrom-to-nanometer spatial resolution; iii) Quantitative material composition and height, hyperspectral, polarization-sensitive, non-destructive 2D and 3D imaging; iv) Self-diagnostic capabilities against aberrations and misalignments; v) Capability to visualize function in real-time, in-situ, in-operando. Our project contributes to the ongoing development of compact EUV spectrometry tools for tabletop ptychography setups, providing a concrete and feasible experimental scheme together with the estimated performances. The results from this project pave the way for more efficient, accurate or versatile ultrafast imaging techniques in materials science, nanotechnology, and biological imaging.