Dynamics and kinetics in soft matter physics, biology, and nanoscience frequently occur on fast (sub)microsecond but not ultrafast timescales which are difficult to probe experimentally. The European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (European XFEL), a megahertz hard X-ray Free-Electron Laser source, enables such experiments via taking series of diffraction patterns at repetition rates of up to 4.5 MHz. Here, we demonstrate X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) with submicrosecond time resolution of soft matter samples at the European XFEL. We show that the XFEL driven by a superconducting accelerator provides unprecedented beam stability within a pulse train. We performed microsecond sequential XPCS experiments probing equilibrium and nonequilibrium diffusion dynamics in water. We find nonlinear heating on microsecond timescales with dynamics beyond hot Brownian motion and superheated water states persisting up to 100 μs at high fluences. At short times up to 20 μs we observe that the dynamics do not obey the Stokes–Einstein predictions.

We study the structure and dynamics of colloidal particles with a spherical hard core and a thermo-responsive soft shell over the whole phase diagram by means of small-angle X-ray scattering and X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy. By changing the effective volume fraction by temperature and particle concentration, liquid, repulsive glass and attractive gel phases are observed. The dynamics slow down with increasing volume fraction in the liquid phase and reflect a Vogel-Fulcher-Tamann behaviour known for fragile glass formers. We find a liquid-glass transition above 50 vol.% that is independent from the particles' concentration and temperature. In an overpacked state at effective volume fractions above 1, the dispersion does not show a liquid phase but undergoes a gel-glass transition at an effective volume fraction of 34 vol.%. At the same concentration, extrema of subdiffusive dynamics are found in the liquid phase at lower weight fractions.We interpret this as dynamic precursors of the glass-gel transition.

During the self-organization of colloidal semiconductor nanoparticles by solvent evaporation, nanoparticle interactions are substantially determined by the organic ligands covering the inorganic core. However, the influence of the ligand grafting density on the assembly pathway is often not considered in experiments. Here, we carry out an in situ synchrotron small-angle X-ray scattering and X-ray cross-correlation analysis study of the real-time assembly of oleic acid-capped PbS nanocrystals at a low ligand coverage of 2.7 molecules/nm2. With high temporal and spatial resolution, we monitor the transitions from the colloidal suspension through the solvated superlattice states into the final dried superstructure. In a single in situ experiment, we observe a two-dimensional hexagonal, hexagonal close-packed, body-centered cubic, body-centered tetragonal (with different degrees of tetragonal distortion), and face-centered cubic superlattice phases. Our results are compared to the self-organization of PbS nanocrystals with a higher ligand coverage up to 4.5 molecules/nm2, revealing different assembly pathways. This highlights the importance of determining the ligand coverage in assembly experiments to approach a complete understanding of the assembly mechanism as well as to be able to predict and produce the targeted superstructures.

We applied shear to a silica nanoparticle dispersion in a microfluidic jet device and observed direction-dependent structure along and across the flow direction. The asymmetries of the diffraction patterns were evaluated by x-ray cross correlation analysis. For different Rayleigh nozzle sizes and shapes, we measured the decay of the shear-induced ordering after the cessation of the shear. At large tube sizes and small shear rates, the characteristic times of the decay become longer, but Péclet-weighted times do not scale linearly with Péclet numbers. By modeling particle distributions with the corresponding diffraction patterns and comparing measured shape asymmetry to simulations, we determined the variation of volume fraction over the azimuthal angle for the maximum ordered state in the jet.

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The dynamics and time scales of higher-order correlations are studied in supercooled colloidal systems. A combination of X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) and X-ray cross-correlation analysis (XCCA) shows the typical slowing of the dynamics of a hard sphere system when approaching the glass transition. The time scales of higher-order correlations are probed using a novel time correlation function g C , tracking the time evolution of cross-correlation function C. With an increasing volume fraction, the ratio of relaxation times of g C to the standard individual particle relaxation time obtained by XPCS increases from ∼0.4 to ∼0.9. While a value of ∼0.5 is expected for free diffusion, the increasing values suggest that the local orders within the sample are becoming more long-lived for larger volume fractions. Furthermore, the dynamics of local order is more heterogeneous than the individual particle dynamics. These results indicate that not only the presence but also the lifetime of locally favored structures increases close to the glass transition.

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