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Two wafers of one 4H-silicon carbide (4H-SiC) bulk crystal, one cut from a longitudinal position close to the crystal's seed and the other close to the cap, were characterized with synchrotron white-beam X-ray topography (SWXRT) in back-reflection and transmission geometry to investigate the dislocation formation and propagation during growth. For the first time, full wafer mappings were recorded in 00012 back-reflection geometry with a CCD camera system, providing an overview of the dislocation arrangement in terms of dislocation type, density and homogeneous distribution. Furthermore, by having similar resolution to conventional SWXRT photographic film, the method enables identification of individual dislocations, even single threading screw dislocations, which appear as white spots with a diameter in the range of 10 to 30 µm. Both investigated wafers showed a similar dislocation arrangement, suggesting a constant propagation of dislocations during crystal growth. A systematic investigation of crystal lattice strain and tilt at selected wafer areas with different dislocation arrangements was achieved with high-resolution X-ray diffractometry reciprocal-space map (RSM) measurements in the symmetric 0004 reflection. It was shown that the diffracted intensity distribution of the RSM for different dislocation arrangements depends on the locally predominant dislocation type and density. Moreover, the orientation of specific dislocation types along the RSM scanning direction has a strong influence on the local crystal lattice properties.

Bent crystals can be used to deflect high-energy charged particles for beam extraction and/or beam collimation at accelerator facilities, thanks to the channelling phenomenon. In the present paper, two perfect silicon mono-crystals were bent using two different methods: sandblasting and the application of a carbon fibre composite. In particular, these samples were obtained for the realization of bent crystal prototypes to be used to steer the 7 TeV proton beam of the Large Hadron Collider in the context of the CRYSBEAM project. The two bending methods were selected since they allow a very homogeneous curvature of the crystals to be obtained, which is essential for high channelling efficiency. Moreover, the deformation obtained is self-standing, i.e. there is no need for any external device to keep the samples bent. Self-standing curvature can be useful because the presence of an external bender could be a severe limitation in the collider beam-pipe. The curvature of the samples was measured through high-energy X-ray diffraction at the ID11 beamline of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France. Since the diffraction efficiencies obtained were in good agreement with theoretical expectations, it follows that the manufacturing techniques did not damage the samples, i.e. the crystallographic quality was preserved. Finally, the crystal quality of the sandblasted sample was investigated in detail at the synchrotron source at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology by X-ray white-beam topography. The measurements showed no diffusion of defects from the machined surfaces to the crystal bulk.

A load path change (LPC) from shear to tension has been studied for a recrystallized 2198 T8 aluminium alloy sheet material by three-dimensional (3D) X-ray imaging combined with image correlation and interpreted by complementary 3D finite element (FE) simulations. A cross-shaped specimen was designed for the non-proportional loading and multiscale study. The effect of the LPC on the formability and related strain localisation, damage and failure was investigated and damage mechanisms could be clearly identified. The macroscopic tension stretch to fracture, measured by an optical extensometer during the shear to tension test, was reduced by about 20% compared to the proportional tension test. Damage, measured by in situ laminography imaging at m-scale resolution, has interestingly already been found under shear, and was quantified as surface void fraction during the LPC. Strain was measured inside the material and at the mesoscale by 2D digital image correlation (DIC) on projected volume data, using the (natural) intermetallic particle contrast present in the 3D laminographic data. An accumulated equivalent strain definition, suited for the description of non-proportional loading, has been applied to the DIC data and FE simulations, indicating good agreement between both. On the microscopic scale, damage was seen to nucleate under shear load in the form of flat cracks, of similar width as the grain size, and in the form of cracks inside intermetallic particles. This damage subsequently grew and coalesced during tensile loading which in turn led to final fracture.

This article describes complete characterization of the polygonal dislocation half-loops (PDHLs) introduced by scratching and subsequent bending of an Si(111) crystal. The study is based on the X-ray topo-tomography technique using both a conventional laboratory setup and the high-resolution X-ray image-detecting systems at the synchrotron facilities at KIT (Germany) and ESRF (France). Numerical analysis of PDHL images is performed using the Takagi–Taupin equations and the simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SART) tomographic algorithm.

Correlated x-ray diffraction imaging and light microscopy provide a conclusive picture of three-dimensional dislocation arrangements on the micrometer scale. The characterization includes bulk crystallographic properties like Burgers vectors and determines links to structural features at the surface. Based on this approach, we study here the thermally induced slip-band formation at prior mechanical damage in Si wafers. Mobilization and multiplication of preexisting dislocations are identified as dominating mechanisms, and undisturbed long-range emission from regenerative sources is discovered.

An open-source framework for conducting a broad range of virtual X-ray imaging experiments,syris, is presented. The simulated wavefield created by a source propagates through an arbitrary number of objects until it reaches a detector. The objects in the light path and the source are time-dependent, which enables simulations of dynamic experiments,e.g.four-dimensional time-resolved tomography and laminography. The high-level interface ofsyrisis written in Python and its modularity makes the framework very flexible. The computationally demanding parts behind this interface are implemented in OpenCL, which enables fast calculations on modern graphics processing units. The combination of flexibility and speed opens new possibilities for studying novel imaging methods and systematic search of optimal combinations of measurement conditions and data processing parameters. This can help to increase the success rates and efficiency of valuable synchrotron beam time. To demonstrate the capabilities of the framework, various experiments have been simulated and compared with real data. To show the use case of measurement and data processing parameter optimization based on simulation, a virtual counterpart of a high-speed radiography experiment was created and the simulated data were used to select a suitable motion estimation algorithm; one of its parameters was optimized in order to achieve the best motion estimation accuracy when applied on the real data.syriswas also used to simulate tomographic data sets under various imaging conditions which impact the tomographic reconstruction accuracy, and it is shown how the accuracy may guide the selection of imaging conditions for particular use cases.

In this work, a group of Lu 2 SiO 5 :Tb (LSO:Tb) scintillating layers with a Tb concentration between 8% and 19% were investigated by means of synchrotron and laboratory techniques. The scintillation efficiency measurements proved that the highest light yield is obtained for a Tb concentration equal to 15%. At higher concentration, quenching processes occur which lower the light emission. The analysis of the reciprocal space maps of the (082) (280) and (040) Bragg reflections showed that LSO:Tb epilayers are well adapted on YbSO substrates for all the investigated concentrations. The spatial resolution tests demonstrated the possibility to achieve a resolution of 1 μm with a 6 μm thick scintillating layer.

The structure and morphology of uncapped and capped InGaN quantum dots formed by spinodal decomposition was studied by AFM, SEM, XRD, and EXAFS. As result of the spinodal decomposition, the uncapped samples show a meander structure with low Indium content which is strained to the GaN template, and large, relaxed Indium-rich islands. The thin meander structure is responsible for the quantum dot emission. A subsequently deposited low-temperature GaN cap layer forms small and nearly unstrained islands on top of the meander structure which is a sharp interface between the GaN template and the cap layer. For an InGaN cap layer deposited with similar growth parameters, a similar morphology but lower crystalline quality was observed. After deposition of a second GaN cap at a slightly higher temperature, the surface of the quantum dot structure is smooth. The large In-rich islands observed for the uncapped samples are relaxed, have a relatively low crystalline quality and a broad size distribution. They are still visible after capping with a low-temperature InGaN or GaN cap at 700 °C but dissolve after deposition of the second cap layer. The low crystalline quality of the large islands does not influence the quantum dot emission but is expected to increase the number of defects in the cap layer. This might reduce the performance of complex devices based on the stacking of several functional units.

The interactions of a beam of hard and spatio-temporally coherent X-rays with a soft-matter sample primarily induce a transverse distribution of exit phase variations δϕ (retardations or advancements in pieces of the wave front exiting the object compared to the incoming wave front) whose free-space propagation over a distance z gives rise to intensity contrast gz. For single-distance image detection and |δϕ| ≪ 1 all-order-in-z phase-intensity contrast transfer is linear in δϕ. Here we show that ideal coherence implies a decay of the (shot-)noise-to-signal ratio in gz and of the associated phase noise as z(-1/2) and z(-1), respectively. Limits on X-ray dose thus favor large values of z. We discuss how a phase-scaling symmetry, exact in the limit δϕ → 0 and dynamically unbroken up to |δϕ| ∼ 1, suggests a filtering of gz in Fourier space, preserving non-iterative quasi-linear phase retrieval for phase variations up to order unity if induced by multi-scale objects inducing phase variations δϕ of a broad spatial frequency spectrum. Such an approach continues to be applicable under an assumed phase-attenuation duality. Using synchrotron radiation, ex and in vivo microtomography on frog embryos exemplifies improved resolution compared to a conventional single-distance phase-retrieval algorithm.

In this work an X-ray imaging system based on a recently developed in-line two-dimensional Bragg magnifier composed of two monolithic V-shaped crystals made of dislocation-free germanium is presented. The channel-cut crystals were used in one-dimensional and in two-dimensional (crossed) configurations in imaging applications and allowed measurement of phase-contrast radiograms both in the edge-enhanced and in the holographic regimes. The measurement of the phase gradient in two orthogonal directions is demonstrated. The effective pixel size attained was 0.17 mu m in the one-dimensional configuration and 0.5 mu m in the two-dimensional setting, offering a twofold improvement in spatial resolution over devices based on silicon. These results show the potential for applying Bragg magnifiers to imaging soft matter at high resolution with reduced dose owing to the higher efficiency of Ge compared with Si.

Computed laminography (CL) was developed to use X-rays from synchrotron sources for high-resolution imaging of the internal structure of a flat specimen from a series of 2-D projection images. The projections are acquired by irradiation of the sample under different rotation angles where the object rotation axis is inclined with respect to the beam direction. This yields for laterally extended objects a more uniform average transmitted intensity during sample rotation compared with computed tomography (CT). The reconstruction problem of CL cannot be reduced to a data-efficient 2-D case (as for parallel-beam CT) since each single slice perpendicular to the rotation axis requires a 2-D region on the detector as input data for all projection directions. This paper describes a computationally efficient reconstruction procedure based on filtered backprojection (FBP) adapted to the CL acquisition geometry. From the Fourier slice theorem, we derive a framework for analytic image reconstruction and outline implementation details of the generic FBP algorithm. Different approaches reducing the reconstruction time by means of parallel and distributed computations are considered and evaluated.

International audience; Considering a pure and not necessarily weak phase object, we review a noniterative and nonlinear single-distance phase-retrieval algorithm. The latter exploits the fact that a well-known linear contrast-transfer function, which incorporates all orders in object-detector distance, can be modified to yield a quasiparticle dispersion. Accepting a small loss of information, this algorithm also retrieves the high-frequency parts of the phase in an artefact free way. We point out an extension of this highly resolving quasiparticle approach for mixed objects by assuming a global attenuation-phase duality. Tomographically reconstructing two developmental stages in Xenopus laevis, we compare our approach with a linear algorithm, based on the transport-of-intensity equation, which suppresses high-frequency information

Synchrotron laminography is combined with Talbot grating interferometry to address weakly absorbing specimens. Integrating both methods into one set-up provides a powerful x-ray diagnostical technique for multiple contrast screening of macroscopically large flat specimen and a subsequent non-destructive three-dimensional (3-D) inspection of regions of interest. The technique simultaneously yields the reconstruction of the 3-D absorption, phase, and the so-called dark-field contrast maps. We report on the theoretical and instrumental implementation of of this novel technique. Its broad application potential is exemplarily demonstrated for the field of cultural heritage, namely study of the historical Dead Sea parchment.

Synchrotron radiation laminography with X-ray diffraction contrast enables three-dimensional imaging of dislocations in monocrystalline wafers. We outline the principle of the technique, the required experimental conditions, and the reconstruction procedure. The feasibility and the potential of the method are demonstrated by three-dimensional imaging of dislocation loops in an indent-damaged and annealed silicon wafer.

For coherent X-ray imaging, based on phase contrast through free-space Fresnel propagation, we discuss two noniterative, nonlinear approaches to the phase-retrieval problem from a single-distance intensity map of a pure-phase object. On one hand, a perturbative set-up is proposed where nonlinear corrections to the linearized transport-of-intensity situation are expanded in powers of the object-detector distance z and are evaluated in terms of the linear estimate. On the other hand, a nonperturbative projection algorithm, which is based on the (linear and local) contrast-transfer function (CTF), works with an effective phase in Fourier space. This effective phase obeys a modified CTF relation between intensity contrast at z > 0 and phase contrast at z = 0: Unphysical singularities of the local CTF model are cut off to yield ‘quasiparticles’ in analogy to the theory of the Fermi liquid. By identifying the positions of the zeros of the Fourier transformed intensity contrast as order parameters for the dynamical breaking of scaling symmetry we investigate the phase structure of the forward-propagation problem when interpreted as a statistical system. Results justify the quasiparticle approach for a wide range of intermediary phase variations. The latter algorithm is applied to data from biological samples recorded at the beamlines TopoTomo and ID19 at ANKA and ESRF, respectively.

Medipix2 single photon-counting pixel detectors are nowadays confirmed as a valuable concept in different X-ray analysis and imaging techniques using either X-ray tubes or synchrotron sources. Recently, the detector pool of the ANKA synchrotron source was equipped with a set of these detectors. In this work we describe the main results obtained by applying Medipix2 single photon counting detectors to synchrotron radiation methods. The results were obtained at the TopoTomo beamline whose X-ray tuneability in energy and flux allows a detailed characterization of different sensor materials, the energy calibration of detector arrays and the application of different imaging methods.