We have used the Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) in studying carbon-based nanomaterials in an unique way, providing first in the world calibration study to connect the counts received at TES to the amount of material at the sample. This is important, as the current gold-standard for elemental amount studies is based on methods such as X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), which is known to have some downsides, especially in its sensitivity (ability to detect roughly down to 0.1 at % of high Z materials, whereas requiring up to % at levels to see low Z materials). With Soft X-Ray operated TES we are clearly able to provide sensitivities at least 10-fold better. Furthermore, as TES is bulk sensitive we are able to study these materials from deeper than with XPS while still being non-destructive to the materials (even radiation damage is negligible as the used X-Ray energies are very low). Publication about these calibration studies is currently being written and will have an important impact on academia and the industry as soon as these TES devices get more foothold on the broader market.
Further, beyond state of the art we have provided a wide understanding of the carbon nanomaterials surface chemistry which we published as a "Guide to the Perplexed", which aims to clearly explain carbon-based nanomaterials properties in easily approachable format, which for the first time offers reasonably easy and simple way for a researcher or industrial specialist to grab a single publication and use that as a good reference for many carbon-based nanomaterials that have been studied in same environment and that are comparable within the dataset. We believe that dissemination of such information is important for not only academia, but also to the industry making this publication to have both socio-economic impact along with societal implications.
There are multitude of other papers published as part of the action, where one key message is, that the synchrotron based radiation measurements offer necessary insight into the materials properties. The automation and the gradual simplification of the sample loading process along with the mechanized and automated sample processing has shown to quite easily increase the throughput of the measurement endstation 10-fold. This has further clearly allowed the systems users to input more samples and get more higher quality data, resulting in less guessing and more data-based decision making on the materials development and research process.
