X-ray Ptychographic Imaging and Spectroscopic Studies of Plasma-Treated Plastic Films.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a thermoplastic polyester with numerous applications in industry. However, it requires surface modification on an industrial scale for printing and coating processes and plasma treatment is one of the most commonly used techniques to increase the hydrophilicity of the PET films. Systematic improvement of the surface modification by adaption of the plasma process can be aided by a comprehensive understanding of the surface morphology and chemistry.

Flexible ptychography platform to expand the potential of imaging at free electron lasers.

Ptychography, a scanning coherent diffraction imaging method, can produce a high-resolution reconstruction of a sample and, at the same time, of the illuminating beam. The emergence of vacuum ultraviolet and X-ray free electron lasers (FELs) has brought sources with unprecedented characteristics that enable X-ray ptychography with highly intense and ultra-fast short-wavelength pulses. However, the shot-to-shot pulse fluctuations typical for FEL pulses and particularly the partial spatial coherence of self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) FELs lead to numerical complexities in the ptychographic algorithms and ultimately restrict the application of ptychography at FELs.

Wavefront Sensing for Evaluation of Extreme Ultraviolet Microscopy.

Wavefront analysis is a fast and reliable technique for the alignment and characterization of optics in the visible, but also in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray regions. However, the technique poses a number of challenges when used for optical systems with numerical apertures (NA) > 0.1.

Wavefront-propagation simulations supporting the design of a time-delay compensating monochromator beamline at FLASH2.

Wavefront-propagation simulations have been performed to complete the design of a monochromator beamline for FLASH2, the variable-gap undulator line at the soft X-ray free-electron laser in Hamburg (FLASH). Prior to propagation through the beamline optical elements, the parameters of the photon source were generated using the GENESIS code which includes the free-electron laser experimental data. Threshold tolerances for the misalignment of mirror angles are calculated and, since diffraction effects were included in the simulations, the minimum quality with respect to the slope errors required for the optics is determined.

Single-shot determination of focused FEL wave fields using iterative phase retrieval.

Determining fluctuations in focus properties is essential for many experiments at Self-Amplified-Spontaneous-Emission (SASE) based Free-Electron-Lasers (FELs), in particular for imaging single non-crystalline biological particles. We report on a diffractive imaging technique to fully characterize highly focused, single-shot pulses using an iterative phase retrieval algorithm, and benchmark it against an existing Hartmann wavefront sensor. The results, both theoretical and experimental, demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique to provide a comprehensive and convenient shot-to-shot measurement of focused-pulse wave fields and source-point positional variations without the need for manipulative optics between the focus and the detector.