Speaker
Dr
Anne BONNIN
(Paul Scherrer Institut)
Description
At the Swiss Light Source (SLS, Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland), the TOmographic Microscopy and Coherent rAdiology experimentTs (TOMCAT) beamline offers multiple X-ray tomographic microscopy end-stations with absorption and phase contrast imaging capabilities: propagation-based tomography [1], grating-based interferometry [2] with directional sensitivity [3] and Zernike Phase Contrast (ZPC) nano-tomography [4]. Sitting on a 2.9T superbend with a critical energy of 11.1keV, the beamline can be operated in monochromatic mode either with a Double Crystal Multilayer Monochromator (DCMM) with a bandwidth of a few percent or with Silicon (111) crystals providing a bandwidth down to 10−4. Both cover an energy range between 8 and 45 keV [5]. The beamline can also be operated in white-beam mode, providing the ideal conditions for ultra-fast acquisitions, thanks to the in-house developed high-speed X-ray detector GigaFRoST [6]. Several microscopes are in operation, which cover isotropic voxel sizes from 11 microns down to 60 nm, allowing a broad range of research and industrial applications: biology, geology, material characterization, paleontology, etc.
This talk will give an overview of the different X-ray microscopes and detectors available for the users. Highlights will be put on the latest camera and detector developments. Furthermore, depending on user requirements (optimizing for speed and/or resolution), several scintillators type and thicknesses are in use: the LuAG:Ce scintillators (CRYTUR, Czech Republic) are our work horses. Lately, because of their degradations (delamination, dust issues, aging, …), we enlarged our scintillators portfolio towards LSO:Ce and GGG:Eu (ESRF). However, we are still facing several problems, illustrated in this talk. This is why cleaning procedure and scintillators handling are in constant evolution and new solutions are currently under investigations.
References:
[1] Paganin, D., et al., Journal of Microscopy, 206: 33–40 (2002)
[2] McDonald S. et al., J. Synchrotron Rad. 16, 562–57 (2009)
[3] Kagias M. et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 093902 (2016)
[4] Stampanoni M. et al., Phys. Rev. B 81, 140105(R) (2010)
[5] Stampanoni M. et al., Proc. SPIE 6318, 63180M (2006)
[6] Mokso R. et al, J. Synchrotron Rad. 24, 1250–1259 (2017)
Primary author
Dr
Anne BONNIN
(Paul Scherrer Institut)
Co-authors
Dr
Christian SCHLEPUETZ
(Paul Scherrer Institut)
Dr
Federica MARONE
(Paul Scherrer Institut)
Prof.
Marco Stampanoni
(ETH/PSI)
