Sparse ab initio x-ray transmission spectrotomography for nanoscopic compositional analysis of functional materials

Imaging materials with synchrotron radiation in a fraction of the time

27 April 2022

An improved algorithm slashes the time needed to image the internal structures of materials using synchrotron radiation.

A technique known as X-ray near-edge spectroscopy is a powerful method for examining the nanostructures of functional materials. It involves building up a three-dimensional image of a sample by collecting two-dimensional slices — much like computed tomography (CT) scans of the human body. But it requires amassing massive amounts of data through performing time-consuming measurements.

Now, a team led by researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland has devised a new algorithm that can extract the same information from just 10% of the measurements. This will save precious synchrotron time.

The researchers demonstrated the effectiveness of their method by using it to examine how the structure of an important industrial catalyst changes as it is used, giving insights into how to make the catalyst last for longer.

They anticipate that their algorithm could be applied to other tomographic techniques.

Supported content

References

1. Science Advances 7, eabf6971 (2021). doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abf6971