Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2024 Conference (MATSUS24)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsus.2024.167
Publication date: 18th December 2023
The scanning transmission soft X-ray spectromicroscopy (STXM) technique allows detailed characterisation of nanoscale materials with strong natural contrast mechanisms. STXM scans a sample across a focused X-ray beam and sequentially measures the intensity of the transmitted beam to produce high resolution images (typically about 30 nm) and scans the photon energy of the incident X-ray beam to produce near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectra of nanoscale objects.[1] While the nanoscale imaging resolution is advantageous, the real power of the technique comes from using spectroscopic effects to achieve strong natural contrast based on molecular structure (and orientation via linear dichroism), elemental composition or oxidation state, and/or magnetisation (via XMCD).[2] The STXM hyperspectral datasets can be quantitatively analysed (i.e. produce percentage composition maps) either by comparing to the known spectra of the component materials, or by grouping sets of similar pixels (i.e. principal component analysis) to identify the materials present and quantify their proportion in each image pixel.
STXM is an excellent tool for characterising nanoengineered polymer films. The molecular structures present in the materials correspond to resonance peaks in the C K-edge NEXAFS spectra (280 – 350 eV), and so STXM images recorded at these photon energies provide strong, natural contrast to differentiate organic materials according to their molecular structures. This works especially well with polymeric materials since the molecular structures are repeated many times and the resulting resonance peaks tend to be intense, providing very clear contrast between the component materials. Here, we will present the operation principles of STXM and discuss some illustrative STXM characterisations of nanoengineered conjugated polymer materials.
The PolLux end station was financed by the German Ministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) through contracts 05K16WED and 05K19WE2
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