Marking another milestone in the TOMCAT 2.0 upgrade project, I-TOMCAT — our newly built beamline — received its first X-ray light on September 25, 2025. A historic first tomogram was acquired the following day, September 26, 2025. The sample was a silicon wafer with inscriptions of the beamline name, logo, and “First Light” etched 15 um deep using MacETCH - a novel fabrication technique developed in-house. Tomographic projections were captured with 2 ms exposure time at 21 keV monochromatic beam and 0.65 um pixel size.
I-TOMCAT will support both absorption-based and phase-contrast imaging, with isotropic voxel sizes ranging from 50 nm up to 0.65 um and monochromatic energy range of 8 to 50 keV. The new beamline features three state-of-the-art endstations, dedicated to high-resolution, high-throughput, and dynamic tomographic imaging. It is currently powered by a U15 undulator and is planned to be upgraded to an HTSU10 in 2027.
