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The photonic device market has a need for low‐cost, high‐resolution periodic patterning that scales with product maturity to large substrate sizes. Eulitha's DTL (Displacement Talbot Lithography) technology was limited to only a single exposure field per substrate on preexisting platforms which can fully pattern 100 and 150mm substrates. The new 'PhableS' is Eulitha's step‐and‐repeat solution to bring all the advantages of the DTL patterning to larger substrates. The PhableS tool builds on Eulitha's patented displacement Talbot lithography technology to open the way for customers to fully scale to high volume production. This tool retains the strong technical performance; including 60nm half pitch resolution (DUV version), 140x140mm2 single shot exposure field, large depth of focus (hundreds of microns), high throughput (+40wph), non‐contact, mask‐based patterning. Automated wafer and mask handling support industry expected repeatability and defect‐free patterning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultrashort optical pulses can trigger a variety of non-equilibrium processes in magnetic thin films affecting electrons and spins on femtosecond timescales. In order to probe the charge and magnetic degrees of freedom simultaneously, we developed an X-ray streaking technique that has the advantage of providing a jitter-free picture of absorption cross-section changes. In this paper, we present an experiment based on this approach, which we performed using five photon probing energies at the Ni M 2 , 3 -edges. This allowed us to retrieve the absorption and magnetic circular dichroism time traces, yielding detailed information on transient modifications of electron and spin populations close to the Fermi level. Our findings suggest that the observed absorption and magnetic circular dichroism dynamics both depend on the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) probing wavelength, and can be described, at least qualitatively, by assuming ultrafast energy shifts of the electronic and magnetic elemental absorption resonances, as reported in recent work. However, our analysis also hints at more complex changes, highlighting the need for further experimental and theoretical studies in order to gain a thorough understanding of the interplay of electronic and spin degrees of freedom in optically excited magnetic thin films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultrafast phenomena on a femtosecond timescale are commonly examined by pump-probe experiments. This implies multiple measurements, where the sample under investigation is pumped with a short light pulse and then probed with a second pulse at various time delays to follow its dynamics. Recently, the principle of streaking extreme ultraviolet (XUV) pulses in the temporal domain has enabled recording the dynamics of a system within a single pulse. However, separate pump-probe experiments at different absorption edges still lack a unified timing, when comparing the dynamics in complex systems. Here, we report on an experiment using a dedicated optical element and the two-color emission of the FERMI XUV free-electron laser to follow the charge and spin dynamics in composite materials at two distinct absorption edges, simultaneously. The sample, consisting of ferromagnetic Fe and Ni layers, separated by a Cu layer, is pumped by an infrared laser and probed by a two-color XUV pulse with photon energies tuned to the M-shell resonances of these two transition metals. The experimental geometry intrinsically avoids any timing uncertainty between the two elements and unambiguously reveals an approximately 100 fs delay of the magnetic response with respect to the electronic excitation for both Fe and Ni. This delay shows that the electronic and spin degrees of freedom are decoupled during the demagnetization process. We furthermore observe that the electronic dynamics of Ni and Fe show pronounced differences when probed at their resonance, while the demagnetization dynamics are similar. These observations underline the importance of simultaneous investigation of the temporal response of both charge and spin in multi-component materials. In a more general scenario, the experimental approach can be extended to continuous energy ranges, promising the development of jitter-free transient absorption spectroscopy in the XUV and soft X-ray regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across all branches of science, medicine and engineering, high‐resolution microscopy is required to understand functionality. Although optical methods have been developed to 'defeat' the diffraction limit and produce 3D images, and electrons have proven ever more useful in creating pictures of small objects or thin sections, so far there is no substitute for X‐ray microscopy in providing multiscale 3D images of objects with a single instrument and minimal labeling and preparation. A powerful technique proven to continuously access length scales from 10 nm to 10 µm is ptychographic X‐ray computed tomography, which, on account of the orthogonality of the tomographic rotation axis to the illuminating beam, still has the limitation of necessitating pillar‐shaped samples of small (ca 10 µm) diameter. Large‐area planar samples are common in science and engineering, and it is therefore highly desirable to create an X‐ray microscope that can examine such samples without the extraction of pillars. Computed laminography, where the axis of rotation is not perpendicular to the illumination direction, solves this problem. This entailed the development of a new instrument, LamNI, dedicated to high‐resolution 3D scanning X‐ray microscopy via hard X‐ray ptychographic laminography. Scanning precision is achieved by a dedicated interferometry scheme and the instrument covers a scan range of 12 mm × 12 mm with a position stability of 2 nm and positioning errors below 5 nm. A new feature of LamNI is a pair of counter‐rotating stages carrying the sample and interferometric mirrors, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scanning X‐ray microscopy such as X‐ray ptychography requires accurate and fast positioning of samples in the X‐ray beam. Sample stages often have a high mobile mass as they may carry additional mechanics or mirrors for position measurements. The high mobile mass of a piezo stage can introduce vibrations in the setup that will lead to imaging quality deterioration. Sample stages also require a large travel range which results in a slow positioning step response and thus high positioning overhead. Moving lightweight X‐ray optics, such as focusing Fresnel zone plates, instead of the sample can improve the situation but it may lead to undesired variations in the illumination probe which may result in reconstruction artifacts. This paper presents a combined approach in which a slow sample stage mechanism covers the long distance range for a large field of view, and a light‐weight optics scanner with a small travel range creates a superimposed motion to achieve a fast step response. The step response in the ptychographic tomography instrument used was thereby improved by an order of magnitude, allowing for efficient measurement without loss of imaging quality. A novel approach for fast ptychography scans over an extended field of view by means of simultaneous Fresnel zone plate and sample motion is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a systematic study, where effects of the illumination probe design on ptychography reconstruction quality are evaluated under well-controlled conditions. The illumination probe was created using Fresnel zone-plate (FZP) optics with locally displaced zones to provide a fine control over perturbations of the illumination wavefront. We show that optimally designed wavefront modulations not only reduce bias and variance in the reconstruction of the lowest spatial frequencies but also lead to improved imaging resolution and reduction of artefacts compared to a conventional FZP. Both these factors are important for quantitative accuracy and resolution of ptychographic tomography. Our work furthers the understanding of the important characteristics of an optimal illumination for high-resolution X-ray ptychography and how to design optimal FZP wavefront modulations for different applications of ptychographic imaging. These findings are applicable and relevant for ptychography using optical, EUV, and X-ray photons as well as electrons.

Macromolecular crystallography often requires focused high-intensity x-ray beams for solving challenging protein structures from micrometer-sized crystals using current synchrotron radiation sources. The design of optical focusing schemes for hard x-rays showing high efficiency and flexibility in beam size is therefore continuously pursued. Here, we present an innovative solution based on a two-stage demagnification of the undulator source for photon energies from 6 keV to 19 keV, commissioned at the X10SA beamline of the Swiss Light Source, where a secondary source is imaged by two crossed silicon kinoform x-ray diffractive lenses with 75 nm outermost zone width. A source-size limited spot with a size of 4.8  μm×1.7  μm(h×v,FWHM) and flux of 7.5×10 10   photons/s at 12.4 keV is demonstrated at the sample position.

High-efficiency microfocusing of multi-keV X-rays at synchrotron sources is highly profitable for spatially resolved structural analysis of many kinds. Because radiation from synchrotron sources is typically elongated along the horizontal dimension, generating a microbeam that is isotropic in size requires a carefully designed optics system. Here we report on using a combination of a horizontally tunable slit downstream of the undulator source with elliptical diffractive Fresnel zone plates. We demonstrate the arrangement in context of small-angle X-ray scattering experiments, obtaining a microbeam of 2.2 μm × 1.8 μm (X × Y) with a flux of 1.2 × 10 10 photons/s at an energy of 11.2 keV at the sample position.