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Ptychography has become a popular technique for high-throughput and high-resolution characterization of 2D/3D materials. When objects introduce significantly large phase shifts, a multi-slice model needs to be considered to account for long-distance wave propagation within the sample. Although many groups have demonstrated multi-slice ptychography using specimens that are several times larger than the depth of field (DOF), the benefits of applying the multi-slice ptychography algorithm on small objects within the DOF is rarely discussed. Here we address this question and demonstrate that multi-slice ptychography can play an important role in improving reconstruction quality for continuous objects that are smaller than the DOF.

X-ray ptychography has gained tremendous success in providing quantitative high-resolution imaging for extended samples. Here we report on recent developments in ptychography imaging techniques and the improvement of reconstruction methods to increase ptychographic imaging throughput at the Advanced Photon Source.

X-ray ptychography is a rapidly developing coherent diffraction imaging technique that provides nanoscale resolution on extended field-of-view. However, the requirement of coherence and the scanning mechanism limit the throughput of ptychographic imaging. In this paper, we propose X-ray ptychography using multiple illuminations instead of single illumination in conventional ptychography. Multiple locations of the sample are simultaneously imaged by spatially separated X-ray beams, therefore, the obtained field-of-view in one scan can be enlarged by a factor equal to the number of illuminations. We have demonstrated this technique experimentally using two X-ray beams focused by a house-made Fresnel zone plate array. Two areas of the object and corresponding double illuminations were successfully reconstructed from diffraction patterns acquired in one scan, with image quality similar with those obtained by conventional single-beam ptychography in sequence. Multi-beam ptychography approach increases the imaging speed, providing an efficient way for high-resolution imaging of large extended specimens.

X-ray ptychography, a powerful scanning lensless imaging technique, has become attractive for nondestructively imaging internal structures at nanoscale. Stage positioning overhead in conventional step-scan ptychography is one of the limiting factors on the imaging throughput. In this work, we demonstrate the use of advanced fly scan ptychography to achieve high-resolution ptychograms of modern integrated circuits on a large field-of-view at millimeter scale. By completely removing stage overheads between scan points, the imaging time for millimeter-size sample can be significantly reduced. Furthermore, we implement the orthogonal probe relaxation technique to overcome the variation of illumination across the large scan area as well as local vibrations. The capability of x-ray ptychography shown here is broadly applicable for various studies, which requires both high spatial resolution and large scan area.

Among different techniques based on x-ray nanoimaging, ptychography has become a popular tool to study specimens at nanometer-scale resolution without the need of using high-resolution optics that requires very stringent manufacturing processes. This high-resolution imaging method is compatible with other imaging modalities acquired in scanning microscopy. At the Advance Photon Source (APS), we have developed two fluorescence microscopes for simultaneous ptychography and fluorescence imaging which together provide a powerful technique to study samples in biology, environmental science, and materials science. Combined with different tilted sample projections, such correlative methods can yield high-resolution 3D structural and chemical images. More recent work has been focused on the development of a fast ptychography instrument called the Velociprobe which is built to take advantage of the over 100 times higher coherent flux provided by the coming APS upgrade source. The Velociprobe uses high-bandwidth accurate interferometry and advanced motion controls with fast continuous scanning schemes which are optimized for large-scale samples and 3D high-resolution imaging. This instrument has been demonstrated to obtain sub-10 nm resolution with different high-photon-efficient scanning schemes using fast data acquisition rate up to 3 kHz (currently limited by detector's full continuous frame rate). A ptychographic imaging rate of 100 _m2/second with a sub-20 nm spatial resolution was shown in this paper.

As a scanning version of coherent diffraction imaging (CDI), X-ray ptychography has become a popular and very successful method for high-resolution quantitative imaging of extended specimens. The requirements of mostly coherent illumination and the scanning mechanism limit the throughput of ptychographic imaging. In this paper, we will introduce the methods we use at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) to achieve highthroughput ptychography by optimizing the parameters of the illumination beam. One work we have done is increasing the illumination flux by using a double-multilayer monochromator (DMM) optics with about 0.8% bandwidth. Compared with our double-crystal monochromator (DCM) optics with 0.01% bandwidth, this DMM optics provides around 20 times more flux. A multi-wavelength reconstruction method has been implemented to deal with the consequential degraded temporal coherence from such an illumination to ensure high-quality reconstruction. In the other work, we adopt a novel use of at-top focusing optics to generate a at-top beam with the diameter of about 1.5 μm on the focal plane. The better uniformity of the probe and the large beam size allow one to significantly increase the step size in ptychography scans and thereby the imaging efficiency.

Motivated by the advanced photon source upgrade, a new hard X-ray microscope called "Velociprobe" has been recently designed and built for fast ptychographic imaging with high spatial resolution. We are addressing the challenges of high-resolution and fast scanning with novel hardware designs, advanced motion controls, and new data acquisition strategies, including the use of high-bandwidth interferometric measurements. The use of granite, air-bearing-supported stages provides the necessary long travel ranges for coarse motion to accommodate real samples and variable energy operation while remaining highly stable during fine scanning. Scanning the low-mass zone plate enables high-speed and high-precision motion of the probe over the sample. With an advanced control algorithm implemented in a closed-loop feedback system, the setup achieves a position resolution (3σ) of 2 nm. The instrument performance is evaluated by 2D fly-scan ptychography with our developed data acquisition strategies. A spatial resolution of 8.8 nm has been demonstrated on a Au test sample with a detector continuous frame rate of 200 Hz. Using a higher flux X-ray source provided by double-multilayer monochromator, we achieve 10 nm resolution for an integrated circuit sample in an ultrafast scan with a detector's full continuous frame rate of 3000 Hz (0.33 ms per exposure), resulting in an outstanding imaging rate of 9 × 104 resolution elements per second.

A centimeter-scale field of view for transmission X-ray radiography from a sub-millimeter-focused synchrotron X-ray beam is achieved by placing a strongly scattering material upstream of the sample. Combining the scattered beam with a detector system synchronized and gated to acquire images from single X-ray pulses provides the capability for time-resolved observations of transient phenomena in samples larger than the native X-ray beam. Furthermore, switching between this scatter-beam imaging (SBI) and scattering modes is trivial compared to switching between unfocused white beam imaging and scattering using a focused pink beam. As a result, SBI additionally provides a straightforward method to precisely align samples relative to the focused X-ray beam for subsequent small-angle X-ray scattering measurements. This paper describes the use of glassy carbon for SBI to observe phenomena during detonation of small-scale high explosive charges and compares the technique to conventional white beam imaging. SBI i...

Here we introduce angle-resolved piezoresponse force microscopy (AR-PFM), whereby the sample is rotated by 30° increments around the surface normal vector and the in-plane PFM phase signals are collected at each angle. We obtained the AR-PFM images of BaTiO3 single crystal and cube-on-cube epitaxial (001) BiFeO3 (BFO) thin film on SrRuO3/SrTiO3 substrate, and confirmed that the AR-PFM provides more unambiguous information on the in-plane polarization directions than the conventional PFM method. Moreover, we found eight additional in-plane polarization variants in epitaxial BFO thin films, which are formed to mitigate highly unstable charged domain boundaries.

We report the dependence of the ferroelectric domain configuration and switching behavior on the shape (square versus round) of epitaxial BiFeO3 (BFO) nanostructures. We fabricated (001) oriented BFO(120 nm)/SrRuO3(SRO,125 nm) film layers on (001) SrTiO3 single crystals by rf magnetron sputter deposition, and patterned them to square (500×500 nm2) and round (502 nm in diameter) shaped nanostructures by focused ion-beam lithography. The surface morphology and the crystalline structure of the nanostructures were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction, respectively, while the domain configuration was investigated using piezoelectric force microscopy. We found that the square-shaped nanostructures exhibit a single variant domain configuration aligned along the [1¯11¯] direction, whereas the round-shaped nanostructures exhibit seven variants of domain configuration along the [1¯11¯], [11¯1¯], [111¯], [111], [1¯11], [11¯1], and [1¯1¯1] directions. Moreover, local d33 piezoelectric c...

The interiors of integrated circuits (ICs) are imaged by X-ray translational scanning ptychography as the sole acquisition method of raw data. This is unlike ptycho- tomographic and ptycho-laminographic schemes, which also require the angle of illumi- nation to be scanned. The computational reconstruction is reconstructed by a Transformer, a form of machine learning algorithm also used in dynamical image processing. During training, the Transformer learns the rich priors that define the IC interior. Even though 3D reconstructions obtained from experimental raw data are not error-free, the technique shows promise toward drastically reducing the overall scanning time.