High-Resolution X-ray Spectro-Microscopy of Au Microcrystallites
Abstract
Understanding the functionalities of heterogeneous catalysts requires high-resolution nanoscale chemical imaging tools. X-ray spectro-ptychography offers this capability by enabling X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) based amplitude and phase contrasts imaging with high spatial resolution. However, such demonstrations at energies above 10 keV, such as the Au L-edges, remain limited due to weak X-ray absorption cross-sections and correspondingly, low signal levels. Here, multimodal spectro-microscopy has been performed on Au microcrystallites that host both conventional face-centered cubic (fcc) and unconventional non-cubic lattices, particularly important for catalysis. Amplitude and phase contrasts across the L3 edge are resolved on thin Au crystallites (150 nm to 1.71 μm) with 45 nm spatial resolution. The resulting XANES spectra exhibit excellent agreement with standard transmission and fluorescence contrasts, while providing complementary chemical insights with improved spatial resolution. Quantitative retrieval of anomalous phase variations ~12 keV further demonstrates the suitability of this method for high-resolution chemical imaging across a wide range of functional materials.
Related
- High-resolution holographic reconstruction combined with fluorescence microscopy to identify unwanted
- Dual deconvolution multifocal fluorescence response matrix microscopy for aberration-free high-throughput super-resolution imaging
- Acoustic coherence-aware oriented 3D photoacoustic microscopy super-resolution with noise-suppression
- Tip-enhanced molecular fluorescence microscopy with atomic-scale resolution
- Towards isotropic super-resolution with dual reflection-transmission tomographic diffractive microscopy
BibTeX
@misc{sow2026highresolution,
title = {{High-Resolution X-ray Spectro-Microscopy of Au Microcrystallites}},
author = {Chaitali Sow and Martin Seyrich and Johannes Hagemann and Giridhar U. Kulkarni and Thomas F. Keller and Christian G. Schroer and Andreas Schropp},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.17417},
eprint = {2610.17417},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17417},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - High-Resolution X-ray Spectro-Microscopy of Au Microcrystallites
AU - Chaitali Sow
AU - Martin Seyrich
AU - Johannes Hagemann
AU - Giridhar U. Kulkarni
AU - Thomas F. Keller
AU - Christian G. Schroer
AU - Andreas Schropp
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/12
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.17417
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17417
AB - Understanding the functionalities of heterogeneous catalysts requires high-resolution nanoscale chemical imaging tools. X-ray spectro-ptychography offers this capability by enabling X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) based amplitude and phase contrasts imaging with high spatial resolution. However, such demonstrations at energies above 10 keV, such as the Au L-edges, remain limited due to weak X-ray absorption cross-sections and correspondingly, low signal levels. Here, multimodal spectro-microscopy has been performed on Au microcrystallites that host both conventional face-centered cubic (fcc) and unconventional non-cubic lattices, particularly important for catalysis. Amplitude and phase contrasts across the L_3 edge are resolved on thin Au crystallites (150 nm to 1.71 μm) with 45 nm spatial resolution. The resulting XANES spectra exhibit excellent agreement with standard transmission and fluorescence contrasts, while providing complementary chemical insights with improved spatial resolution. Quantitative retrieval of anomalous phase variations ~12 keV further demonstrates the suitability of this method for high-resolution chemical imaging across a wide range of functional materials.
ER -