III-As nanowires are candidates for near-infrared light emitters and detectors that can be directly integrated onto silicon. However, nanoscale to microscale variations in structure, composition, and strain within a given nanowire, as well as variations between nanowires, pose challenges to correlating microstructure with device performance. In this work, we utilize coherent nanofocused X-rays to characterize stacking defects and strain in a single InGaAs nanowire supported on Si. By reconstructing diffraction patterns from the 21̅1̅0 Bragg peak, we show that the lattice orientation varies along the length of the wire, while the strain field along the cross-section is largely unaffected, leaving the band structure unperturbed. Diffraction patterns from the 011̅0 Bragg peak are reproducibly reconstructed to create three-dimensional images of stacking defects and associated lattice strains, revealing sharp planar boundaries between different crystal phases of wurtzite (WZ) structure that contribute to charge carrier scattering. Phase retrieval is made possible by developing multiangle Bragg projection ptychography (maBPP) to accommodate coherent nanodiffraction patterns measured at arbitrary overlapping positions at multiple angles about a Bragg peak, eliminating the need for scan registration at different angles. The penetrating nature of X-ray radiation, together with the relaxed constraints of maBPP, will enable the in operando imaging of nanowire devices.

This two‐part article series provides a generalized description of the scattering geometry of Bragg coherent diffraction imaging (BCDI) experiments, the shear distortion effects inherent in the 3D image obtained from presently used methods and strategies to mitigate this distortion. Part I starts from fundamental considerations to present the general real‐space coordinate transformation required to correct this shear, in a compact operator formulation that easily lends itself to implementation with available software packages. Such a transformation, applied as a final post‐processing step following phase retrieval, is crucial for arriving at an undistorted, correctly oriented and physically meaningful image of the 3D crystalline scatterer. As the relevance of BCDI grows in the field of materials characterization, the available sparse literature that addresses the geometric theory of BCDI and the subsequent analysis methods are generalized here. This geometrical aspect, specific to coherent Bragg diffraction and absent in 2D transmission CDI experiments, gains particular importance when it comes to spatially resolved characterization of 3D crystalline materials in a reliable nondestructive manner. This series of articles describes this theory, from the diffraction in Bragg geometry to the corrections needed to obtain a properly rendered digital image of the 3D scatterer. Part I of this series provides the experimental BCDI community with the general form of the 3D real‐space distortions in the phase‐retrieved object, along with the necessary post‐retrieval correction method. Part II builds upon the geometric theory developed in Part I with the formalism to correct the shear distortions directly on an orthogonal grid within the phase‐retrieval algorithm itself, allowing more physically realistic constraints to be applied. Taken together, Parts I and II provide the X‐ray science community with a set of generalized BCDI shear‐correction techniques crucial to the final rendering of a 3D crystalline scatterer and for the development of new BCDI methods and experiments.

No abstract

Compressed Sensing (CS) techniques are used to measure and reconstruct surface dynamical processes with a helium spin-echo spectrometer for the first time. Helium atom scattering is a well established method for examining the surface structure and dynamics of materials at atomic sized resolution and the spin-echo technique opens up the possibility of compressing the data acquisition process. CS methods demonstrating the compressibility of spin-echo spectra are presented for several measurements. Recent developments on structured multilevel sampling that are empirically and theoretically shown to substantially improve upon the state of the art CS techniques are implemented. In addition, wavelet based CS approximations, founded on a new continuous CS approach, are used to construct continuous spectra. In order to measure both surface diffusion and surface phonons, which appear usually on different energy scales, standard CS techniques are not sufficient. However, the new continuous CS wavelet approach allows simultaneous analysis of surface phonons and molecular diffusion while reducing acquisition times substantially. The developed methodology is not exclusive to Helium atom scattering and can also be applied to other scattering frameworks such as neutron spin-echo and Raman spectroscopy.

The factors limiting the performance of alternative polycrystalline solar cells as compared with their single-crystal counterparts are not fully understood, but are thought to originate from structural and chemical heterogeneities at various length scales. Here, it is demonstrated that multimodal focused nanobeam X-ray microscopy can be used to reveal multiple aspects of the problem in a single measurement by mapping chemical makeup, lattice structure and charge collection efficiency simultaneously in a working solar cell. This approach was applied to micrometre-sized individual grains in a Cu(In,Ga)Se2 polycrystalline film packaged in a working device. It was found that, near grain boundaries, collection efficiency is increased, and that in these regions the lattice parameter of the material is expanded. These observations are discussed in terms of possible physical models and future experiments.

The microscopic motion of water is a central question, but gaining experimental information about the interfacial dynamics of water in fields such as catalysis, biophysics and nanotribology is challenging due to its ultrafast motion, and the complex interplay of intermolecular and molecule-surface interactions. Here we present an experimental and computational study of the nanoscale-nanosecond motion of water at the surface of a topological insulator (TI), Bi 2 Te 3. Understanding the chemistry and motion of molecules on TI surfaces, while considered a key to design and manufacturing for future applications, has hitherto been hardly addressed experimentally. By combining helium spin-echo spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations, we are able to obtain a general insight into the diffusion of water on Bi 2 Te 3. Instead of Brownian motion, we find an activated jump diffusion mechanism. Signatures of correlated motion suggest unusual repulsive interactions between the water molecules. From the lineshape broadening we determine the diffusion coefficient, the diffusion energy and the pre-exponential factor.

arXiv:1903.07372v4 [cond-mat.mes-hall]

X‐ray Bragg coherent diffraction imaging (BCDI) has been demonstrated as a powerful 3D microscopy approach for the investigation of sub‐micrometre‐scale crystalline particles. The approach is based on the measurement of a series of coherent Bragg diffraction intensity patterns that are numerically inverted to retrieve an image of the spatial distribution of the relative phase and amplitude of the Bragg structure factor of the diffracting sample. This 3D information, which is collected through an angular rotation of the sample, is necessarily obtained in a non‐orthogonal frame in Fourier space that must be eventually reconciled. To deal with this, the approach currently favored by practitioners (detailed in Part I) is to perform the entire inversion in conjugate non‐orthogonal real‐ and Fourier‐space frames, and to transform the 3D sample image into an orthogonal frame as a post‐processing step for result analysis. In this article, which is a direct follow‐up of Part I, two different transformation strategies are demonstrated, which enable the entire inversion procedure of the measured data set to be performed in an orthogonal frame. The new approaches described here build mathematical and numerical frameworks that apply to the cases of evenly and non‐evenly sampled data along the direction of sample rotation (i.e. the rocking curve). The value of these methods is that they rely on the experimental geometry, and they incorporate significantly more information about that geometry into the design of the phase‐retrieval Fourier transformation than the strategy presented in Part I. Two important outcomes are (1) that the resulting sample image is correctly interpreted in a shear‐free frame and (2) physically realistic constraints of BCDI phase retrieval that are difficult to implement with current methods are easily incorporated. Computing scripts are also given to aid readers in the implementation of the proposed formalisms.