Photonics

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Dr. Yang Du

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Guest Editor

Institute of Advanced Science Facilities, 268 Zhenyuan St., Guangming District, Shenzhen 518107, China
Interests: X-ray free electron laser; X-ray phase-contrast imaging; X-ray microscopy; coherent diffraction imaging; ptychography; wavefront sensing

Dr. Yaohu Lei

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Yuehai Campus, 3688 Nanhai Avenue, Nanshan District, Shenzhen 518060, China
Interests: X-ray phase-contrast imaging; X-ray detectors; X-ray and neutron grating technology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past one hundred years, X-ray optics has made great progress and has been widely used in the fields of biology, medical diagnosis, materials science, energy, astronomy, nondestructive testing, etc. X-rays, as an effective tool and messenger, have greatly improved the level of people's understanding of nature and the universe. High-resolution X-ray imaging has long been a focus of attention and has become an indispensable tool in investigating the intricacies of the objects at the micro- and nanoscales in various fields. With the advent of new X-ray light sources, high-precision X-ray optics, high-resolution detection technologies, and advanced imaging methods, imaging resolutions are gradually improving. Advanced radiation facilities, such as those using a synchrotron radiation source and X-ray free electron laser, can be used for advanced imaging techniques like X-ray crystallography, coherent diffraction imaging, and X-ray spectroscopy, and achieve extremely high spatial resolutions down to the nanometer or even sub-nanometer scales and high temporal resolution ranging from nanoseconds to attoseconds. X-ray astronomy with high spatial/temporal/energy resolutions significantly advances the study of extreme astrophysical phenomena, which is critical to improving our understanding of the X-ray universe. Ongoing research in X-ray detector technology, including the use of advanced materials and digital sensors, continues to improve the resolution and sensitivity of X-ray imaging systems. In the future, continued research and technological progress will continue to break through the boundaries of resolution imaging capabilities.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue “Advances in X-ray Optics for High-Resolution Imaging” for the journal Photonics. This Special Issue aims to present recent advances in X-ray optics for high-resolution imaging.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

Advanced high-resolution X-ray imaging;
X-ray optics and components;
Advances in detector technology;
Applications of X-ray high-resolution imaging;
Micro-computed tomography;
X-ray polarimetric/phase imaging;
X-ray microscopy/fluoroscopy/spectroscopy;
Synchrotron radiation and X-ray free electron laser methodology;
X-ray astronomy;
EUV/neutron imaging.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Yang Du
Dr. Yaohu Lei
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Photonics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

X-ray imaging
X-ray optics
high resolution
detectors
microscopy
fluoroscopy
spectroscopy
ultrafast
X-ray astronomy
EUV/neutron imaging

Published Papers (1 paper)

Research

23 pages, 3250 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Towards Construction of a Novel Nanometer-Resolution MeV-STEM for Imaging Thick Frozen Biological Samples

by Xi Yang, Liguo Wang, Jared Maxson, Adam Christopher Bartnik, Michael Kaemingk, Weishi Wan, Luca Cultrera, Lijun Wu, Victor Smaluk, Timur Shaftan, Sean McSweeney, Chunguang Jing, Roman Kostin and Yimei Zhu

Photonics 2024, 11(3), 252; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics11030252 - 11 Mar 2024

Viewed by 840

Abstract

Driven by life-science applications, a mega-electron-volt Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope (MeV-STEM) has been proposed here to image thick frozen biological samples as a conventional Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) may not be suitable to image samples thicker than 300–500 nm and various volume electron microscopy (EM) techniques either suffering from low resolution, or low speed. The high penetration of inelastic scattering signals of MeV electrons could make the MeV-STEM an appropriate microscope for biological samples as thick as 10

μ

m or more with a nanoscale resolution, considering the effect of electron energy, beam broadening, and low-dose limit on resolution. The best resolution is inversely related to the sample thickness and changes from 6 nm to 24 nm when the sample thickness increases from 1 μm to 10 μm. To achieve such a resolution in STEM, the imaging electrons must be focused on the specimen with a nm size and an mrad semi-convergence angle. This requires an electron beam emittance of a few picometers, which is ~1000 times smaller than the presently achieved nm emittance, in conjunction with less than 10⁻⁴ energy spread and 1 nA current. We numerically simulated two different approaches that are potentially applicable to build a compact MeV-STEM instrument: (1) DC (Direct Current) gun, aperture, superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities, and STEM column; (2) SRF gun, aperture, SRF cavities, and STEM column. Beam dynamic simulations show promising results, which meet the needs of an MeV-STEM, a few-picometer emittance, less than 10⁻⁴ energy spread, and 0.1–1 nA current from both options. Also, we designed a compact STEM column based on permanent quadrupole quintuplet, not only to demagnify the beam size from 1

μ

m at the source point to 2 nm at the specimen but also to provide the freedom of changing the magnifications at the specimen and a scanning system to raster the electron beam across the sample with a step size of 2 nm and the repetition rate of 1 MHz. This makes it possible to build a compact MeV-STEM and use it to study thick, large-volume samples in cell biology. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in X-ray Optics for High-Resolution Imaging)

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