AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Wednesday Sessions
       Session MI-WeM

Invited Paper MI-WeM1
Imaging Magnetic Nanostructures via Resonant Soft X-Ray Spectro Holography

Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 8:00 am, Room 2006

Session: Magnetic Imaging
Presenter: O. Hellwig, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
Correspondent: Click to Email

I will present how to exploit the coherence and tunable polarization of soft X-ray synchrotron radiation for imaging magnetic nanostructures via Fourier Transform Holography. This new lensless imaging technique is based on the direct Fourier inversion of a holographically formed soft x-ray interference pattern. Our implementation is particularly simple and is based on placing the sample behind a lithographically manufactured mask with a micron-sized sample aperture and a nano-sized reference hole. The technique avoids costly zone plate X-ray lenses as used in conventional X-ray microscopy. By exploiting the magnetic dichroism in resonance at the L3 edges of the magnetic transition metals (wavelength ~ 1-2 nm (700-900 eV), images of magnetic nanostructures have been obtained with a spatial resolution below 50 nm. Different examples will be presented. The technique is transferable to a wide variety of specimen, appears scalable to diffraction-limited resolution (about 2 nm), and is well suited for ultra-fast single-shot imaging with future X-ray free electron laser sources. @FootnoteText@Experiments have been performed at BESSY in Berlin in collaboration with Stefan Eisebitt and Wolfgang Eberhardt, BESSY GmbH, Albert-Einstein-Str.15, 12489 Berlin, Germany and Jan Luening, William F. Schlotter and Joachim Stoehr SSRL, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park CA 94025, USA and Department of Applied Physics, 316 Via Pueblo Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4090 .