Development of Optimized Controls and Hardware for Synchrotron Hard X-Ray Microscopes with Advanced Spectroscopic Capabilities

The project responds to technical topic 9(a): Technology to support BES user facilities: Synchrotron Radiation Facilities. Dr. Michael Feser, the principal investigator from Xradia, and Dr. Piero Pianetta, from SLAC, will work together to develop optimized hardware and controls tested on the SLAC Xradia nanoXCT- S100 microscope and sold for future and existing TXM systems by Xradia Inc. Stanford Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) developed an x-ray microscopy facility, based on an Xradia Inc. Transmission X-ray Microscope (TXM), used by a growing community for research in the areas of energy (battery, fuel cell and catalysis R & amp;D), biomedical (bone and dental) and environmental remediation. Great strides have been made in energy research by extending the capabilities of the Xradia TXM to include energy scanning allowing in-situ 3-D imaging of the chemical states of battery and fuel cell electrodes and to watch catalytic reactions in real time. This was made possible by a SLAC developed open source software tool (TXM Wizard) that allows text scripts to be manually inputted into the TXM for special data acquisition modes (2D mosaic acquisition, 3D mosaic tomography, XANES spectroscopic tomography) and then be used for data analysis. In this project, Xradia Inc. and SLAC are partnering to develop these new spectroscopic capabilities into a commercial grade solution through: 1) development of an integrated, fully automated command and data interface between the TXM-Wizard and the Xradia control software. This will significantly increase the productivity of the TXM and allow non-experts, including industry users, to routinely access the advanced imaging modes; 2) optimize the TXM control system for the data rates made possible by advanced synchrotron sources to enable quick imaging for improved in-situ, real time studies of energy materials; and 3) incorporate a fully integrated scanning fluorescence mode into the TXM with an analysis area below 1 micrometer an ppm sensitivity. This will allow correlations between the structural/ chemical information obtained on majority elements within a sample in the transmission imaging mode of the TXM and trace elements which can only be observed using x-ray fluorescence. The new capabilities will greatly enhance not only SLACs ability to answer national energy needs and deliver on the DOE mission but also that of the other DOE hard x-ray user facilities developing x-ray microscopy facilities. The developed technology will be commercialized by Xradia Inc. through bundling with new TXM systems and upgrades to existing TXM systems.