Villigen - For the first time, researchers can use ultra-short X-ray ripples to investigate the most fundamental processes in materials with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. The new technique was developed by an international team co-led by the Paul Scherrer Institute.
(CONNECT) An international collaboration of researchers co-led by the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and the IMDEA Nanociencia institute in Madrid has, according to a press release, developed an all-X-ray transient grating experiment that allows the dynamics of quantum particles at nanoscale to be studied. According to a press release issued by IMDEA Nanociencia, which was also published by PSI, the transient grating (TG) spectroscopy, as the technique is known, has now been significantly optimized.
TG spectroscopy makes it possible to observe the smallest changes in space and time, allowing scientists to understand how heat or charge moves through materials. Until now, the gratings were created using X-rays but measured using visible light, limiting the size of the grating spacing to about one micron. However, many of the most interesting behaviors of materials occur on even smaller scales.
For the first time, the new technique uses hard X-ray beams to both generate and study gratings. This first demonstration of transient grating spectroscopy using only hard X-rays identifies key factors that can unlock previously inaccessible spatial regions, from studying heat flow through a microchip to revealing the dynamics of phase transitions in quantum materials.
This work contains a “number of breakthroughs”, according to the press release. These are described as “remarkable as they establish a new experimental method to investigate nanoscale phenomena in functional materials such as miniaturized thermal devices, sensors, superconductors, ultrafast magnetic switches, photocatalysts and ultrafast data storage elements”.
This research was recently published in the journal “Communications Physics”. Alongside the PSI, other Swiss organizations taking part in the research included the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and Lausanne (EPFL). ce/mm
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