Scientific Reports (Oct 2023)

Simultaneous bright- and dark-field X-ray microscopy at X-ray free electron lasers

  • Leora E. Dresselhaus-Marais,
  • Bernard Kozioziemski,
  • Theodor S. Holstad,
  • Trygve Magnus Ræder,
  • Matthew Seaberg,
  • Daewoong Nam,
  • Sangsoo Kim,
  • Sean Breckling,
  • Sungwook Choi,
  • Matthieu Chollet,
  • Philip K. Cook,
  • Eric Folsom,
  • Eric Galtier,
  • Arnulfo Gonzalez,
  • Tais Gorkhover,
  • Serge Guillet,
  • Kristoffer Haldrup,
  • Marylesa Howard,
  • Kento Katagiri,
  • Seonghan Kim,
  • Sunam Kim,
  • Sungwon Kim,
  • Hyunjung Kim,
  • Erik Bergbäck Knudsen,
  • Stephan Kuschel,
  • Hae Ja Lee,
  • Chuanlong Lin,
  • R. Stewart McWilliams,
  • Bob Nagler,
  • Martin Meedom Nielsen,
  • Norimasa Ozaki,
  • Dayeeta Pal,
  • Ricardo Pablo Pedro,
  • Alison M. Saunders,
  • Frank Schoofs,
  • Toshimori Sekine,
  • Hugh Simons,
  • Tim van Driel,
  • Bihan Wang,
  • Wenge Yang,
  • Can Yildirim,
  • Henning Friis Poulsen,
  • Jon H. Eggert

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35526-5
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 1
pp. 1 – 19

Abstract

Read online

Abstract The structures, strain fields, and defect distributions in solid materials underlie the mechanical and physical properties across numerous applications. Many modern microstructural microscopy tools characterize crystal grains, domains and defects required to map lattice distortions or deformation, but are limited to studies of the (near) surface. Generally speaking, such tools cannot probe the structural dynamics in a way that is representative of bulk behavior. Synchrotron X-ray diffraction based imaging has long mapped the deeply embedded structural elements, and with enhanced resolution, dark field X-ray microscopy (DFXM) can now map those features with the requisite nm-resolution. However, these techniques still suffer from the required integration times due to limitations from the source and optics. This work extends DFXM to X-ray free electron lasers, showing how the $$10^{12}$$ 10 12 photons per pulse available at these sources offer structural characterization down to 100 fs resolution (orders of magnitude faster than current synchrotron images). We introduce the XFEL DFXM setup with simultaneous bright field microscopy to probe density changes within the same volume. This work presents a comprehensive guide to the multi-modal ultrafast high-resolution X-ray microscope that we constructed and tested at two XFELs, and shows initial data demonstrating two timing strategies to study associated reversible or irreversible lattice dynamics.