Scientific Highlights
World Record: 7 nm Resolution in Scanning Soft X-ray Microscopy
During the past decade, scientists have put high effort to achieve sub-10 nm resolution in X-ray microscopy. Recent developments in high-resolution lithography-based diffractive optics, combined with the extreme stability and precision of the PolLux and HERMES scanning X-ray microscopes, resulted now in a so far unreached resolution of seven nanometers in scanning soft X-ray microscopy. Utilizing this highly precise microscopy technique with the X-ray magnetic circular dichroism effect, dimensionality effects in an ensemble of interacting magnetic nanoparticles can be revealed.
Enhanced Stability of a Pyrophosphate cathode for Na-ion batteries
The structural changes of Na3.32Fe2.11Ca0.23(P2O7)2 during several charge discharge cycles is viewed by its powder pattern and selected cell parameter evolution.
Dr. Manuel Guizar-Sicairos elected as Fellow member of The Optical Society (OSA)
Dr. Manuel Guizar-Sicairos, beamline scientist at the cSAXS beamline, was elected as a Fellow Member of The Optical Society (OSA) for seminal contributions to methods and applications of coherent lensless imaging, ptychography, x-ray nanotomography, and new modalities of x-ray microscopy.
Two-color snapshots of ultrafast charge and spin dynamics
In a joint research effort, an international team of scientists lead by Emmanuelle Jal (Sorbonne Université) performed a time-resolved experiment at the FERMI free-electron laser to disclose the dynamic behavior of two magnetic element of a compount material in only one snapshot. The X-ray Optics and Applications group developed a dedicated optical element for this experiment that is usable with two different photon energies (colors) simultaneously.
Customising an electronic material
PSI scientists have investigated a material that could be suitable for future data storage applications. They have manipulated the crystalline structure of their sample while measuring how this affects the material’s magnetic and electronic properties.
A question of binding
At PSI, researchers are screening molecule fragments to see if these bind to important proteins of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and thus have the potential to disable it. They are hoping the many individual pieces of information will yield an answer as to what an effective drug might look like.
«We're making SLS fit for the future»
The Swiss Light Source SLS is set to get an upgrade to make excellent research possible in the coming decades as well. Hans Braun, SLS 2.0 project leader, talks about this undertaking in an interview.
3D printing silica aerogels at the micrometer scale
A group of EMPA and ETH Zürich researchers have developed a new method to directly write ink made of silica aerogels in 3D. Thanks to X-ray phase contrast tomography at the TOMCAT beamline they characterized the resulting printed material with different compositions. Their results were published in Nature on August 18, 2020.
X-rays illuminate the particle atomic structure of cyan light emitting 6-monolayers CsPbBr3 nanoplatelets by Total Scattering
A cyan light (492 nm) emitting colloidal suspension of CsPbBr3 nanoplatelets in a flask, together with the high-quality XRPD Total Scattering pattern of the suspension measured at the X04SA-MS beamline and the full-nanoparticle structure thereby inferred.