Nanoscience and nanotechnology

Exploring, manipulating and designing forms of matter at the scale of nanometres (billionths of a metre) is a rapidly expanding area, particularly in electronics, medical diagnosis and treatment, and consumer manufacturing. In addition to being extremely small, nanoscale objects have exceptional properties thanks to their high surface area to volume ratio. Imaging nanoscale features in larger objects will give us a better insight into the interactions within living cells and the functioning of man-made materials, including catalysts and electronic devices.

Nanoscale objects are so small that they cannot be seen with a light microscope: the imaging length-scale needs to be shorter than the wavelength of visible light, this being the key to the successful application of X-rays as the imaging medium.

New analytical tools are needed to investigate the structure and behaviour of objects at the nanoscale. New beamlines in which X-ray beams are focused into minute spots about 20 nanometres across will be able to pick out individual biomolecular processes in living cells, or characterise individual semiconductor structures such as quantum dots at the atomic level. The Upgrade will take imaging to higher spatial resolution with routine operation of 20 nm beams.

Example: optimising the features and stability of microelectronic devices. 3D rendition of solder bumps of a flip-chip device on a printed circuit board. Internal voids affecting the reliability of the device can be seen on the right-hand side (L. Helfen, et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 86, 071915 (2005)).

Experiments in nanoscience

A group of beamlines will be devoted to studying samples of materials across different length-scales, from micrometres to nanometres to atomic resolution. X-ray diffraction used tomographically, and combined with complementary spectroscopic techniques, will be able to give a full three-dimensional picture of the hierarchical structure of complex soft materials such as polymers and biopolymers, and multicrystalline minerals, or engineering components at the nanoscale. European research, both academic and industrial, will greatly benefit from these enhanced experimental facilities.

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