Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

This proposal is to enable nanoscale lensless imaging capability to our femtosecond enhancement cavity (fsEC) extreme ultraviolet (XUV) laser source via coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) and pytchography. Due to their sub-micron resolution capability, these two imaging techniques have generated significant interest in a range of applications spanning nanostructure metrology, biological imaging, and element-specific sample characterization. In turn, significant investments have been made in CDI and pytchography beamlines at large-scale XUV sources such as synchrotrons and free electron lasers. To further push the techniques themselves as well as utilize them for imaging applications it is highly desirable to also develop lab-based implementations and the current bottleneck in these efforts is appropriate XUV sources that have high enough photon flux and low amplitude noise. Our fsEC XUV system is a unique-in-Canada (and one of 5 worldwide) ultrafast pulse source that delivers UV to XUV radiation in the 8-40 eV photon energy range (~30-150 nm) with photon fluxes >10^11 photons/s (competitive with third generation synchrotrons.) By combining our state-of-the-art XUV laser, the ground-breaking techniques developed by our collaborators at the Colorado School of Mines, and new commercial imaging technology, we are poised to make important new contributions to the rapidly advancing field of XUV ptychography. In addition, UBC's state-of-the-art infrastructure within the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute includes both instrumentation and world leading experts in nanofabrication, laser spectroscopy, and diagnostics methods, all united by the shared goal of advancing our knowledge of quantum materials. Adding CDI and pytchography capabilities to this portfolio of tools and facilities will help maintain UBC's and, more broadly, Canada's leadership position in this rapidly growing field.