Recent findings at the ALS show that small crystal size is key to maintaining a battery’s performance and establish soft x-ray ptychography as an essential tool for studying chemical states in nanoparticles.
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ALS Work Using Ptychography
Ptychography uses coherent diffraction patterns recorded from fields of illumination that are physically overlapped on an extended sample, with known separation. This information is used in the iterative reconstruction of phase, and results in a robust and unique solution that gives the local complex refractive index of the object and the complex illumination function. Through phase retrieval from diffraction data, ptychography can in principle overcome the limitations of x-ray optics, namely limited efficiency and numerical aperture.
Record-Setting Microscopy Illuminates Energy Storage Materials
Using soft x-ray ptychography, researchers at the ALS have demonstrated the highest-resolution x-ray microscopy ever achieved by imaging five-nanometer structures. The researchers used ptychographic imaging to map the chemical composition of lithium iron phosphate nanocrystals, yielding important new insights into a material of high interest for electrochemical energy storage. Read more »