The Hard X-ray Nanoprobe Beamline (HXN) at the National Synchrotron Light Source II offers a suite of advanced imaging tools for visualizing morphology, chemistry, composition and crystalline strain with spatial resolutions at 5 to 50 nanometers.  Though these resolutions are still rather modest in comparison with electron microscopy techniques (SEM, TEM, or sTEM), the deep penetrating power of x-rays offers the capability of visualizing deeply buried nanostructures with minimal sample preparation.   A unique capability of the HXN Beamline is that all experiments are carried out using multimodal imaging, where two or more different imaging measurements are performed simultaneously, so that different types of sample heterogeneity (i.e. morphology, composition, crystalline ordering) can be visualized together.   The presentation will focus on two common types of applications.  The first application is visualization of elemental distribution together with nanostructure.  This method is an effective way of characterizing material synthesis or investigating phase separation.  For battery materials, elemental mapping investigation can be performed under in-situ electrochemical control.   The second application is to visualize strain distribution within a single crystal sample.  This method allow investigating crystalline defects associated with synthesis.  The presentation will provide a few science examples for both categories of applications.

Material characterizations by nanoscale X-ray imaging

256th National Meeting (2018)

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