Nanoporous gold: a hierarchical and multiscale 3D test pattern for characterizing X-ray nano-tomography systems

Larsson, Emanuel; Gürsoy, Doğa; Carlo, Francesco De; Lilleodden, Erica T.; Storm, Malte; Wilde, Fabian; Hu, Kaixiong; Müller, Martin; Greving, Imke

doi:10.1107/s1600577518015242

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…To transfer this technique to nanoporous metals, the resolution in X-ray imaging needs to be improved to reach a few nm. So far, Larsson et al have achieved a resolution of 62 nm [55]. For samples with smaller ligament sizes, the existing alternatives FIB-SEM tomography [18,19,34] and TEM tomography [16,26] are much more labor-intensive.…”

Section: Summary and Future Prospectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Experimentally Informed Micromechanical Modeling of Nanoporous Metals: From Structural Descriptors to Predictive Structure–Property Relationships

Richert

Huber

2020

Materials

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Nanoporous metals made by dealloying take the form of macroscopic (mm- or cm-sized) porous bodies with a solid fraction of around 30%. The material exhibits a network structure of “ligaments” with an average ligament diameter that can be adjusted between 5 and 500 nm. Current research explores the use of nanoporous metals as functional materials with respect to electrochemical conversion and storage, bioanalytical and biomedical applications, and actuation and sensing. The mechanical behavior of the network structure provides the scope for fundamental research, particularly because of the high complexity originating from the randomness of the structure and the challenges arising from the nanosized ligaments, which can be accessed through an experiment only indirectly via the testing of the macroscopic properties. The strength of nanoscale ligaments increases systematically with decreasing size, and owing to the high surface-to-volume ratio their elastic and plastic properties can be additionally tuned by applying an electric potential. Therefore, nanoporous metals offer themselves as suitable model systems for exploring the structure–property relationships of complex interconnected microstructures as well as the basic mechanisms of the chemo-electro-mechanical coupling at interfaces. The micromechanical modeling of nanoporous metals is a rapidly growing field that strongly benefits from developments in computational methods, high-performance computing, and visualization techniques; it also benefits at the same time through advances in characterization techniques, including nanotomography, 3D image processing, and algorithms for geometrical and topological analysis. The review article collects articles on the structural characterization and micromechanical modeling of nanoporous metals and discusses the acquired understanding in the context of advancements in the experimental discipline. The concluding remarks are given in the form of a summary and an outline of future perspectives.

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Section: Summary and Future Prospectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Experimentally Informed Micromechanical Modeling of Nanoporous Metals: From Structural Descriptors to Predictive Structure–Property Relationships

Richert

Huber

2020

Materials

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“…For faster scan times, smearing of more than one pixel was allowed to keep the efficiency reasonably high. (Larsson et al, 2019). Gold is a strongly absorbing material at 11 keV, with a / of only 6.25 (optical material parameter given in Table S2).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The high-Z material nanoporous gold (NPG) was chosen as a test case for the absorption contrast tomography. This material has been proven to be well suited as a test object for evaluating TXM performance before (Larsson et al, 2019). For the Zernike phase contrast we chose a low-Z phase object with nano-sized grains, namely a magnesium alloy (Ghasemi et al, 2018;Penther et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pushing the temporal resolution in absorption and Zernike phase contrast nanotomography: enabling fast in situ experiments

et al. 2020

Self Cite

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Hard X-ray nanotomography enables 3D investigations of a wide range of samples with high resolution (<100 nm) with both synchrotron-based and laboratory-based setups. However, the advantage of synchrotron-based setups is the high flux, enabling time resolution, which cannot be achieved at laboratory sources. Here, the nanotomography setup at the imaging beamline P05 at PETRA III is presented, which offers high time resolution not only in absorption but for the first time also in Zernike phase contrast. Two test samples are used to evaluate the image quality in both contrast modalities based on the quantitative analysis of contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and spatial resolution. High-quality scans can be recorded in 15 min and fast scans down to 3 min are also possible without significant loss of image quality. At scan times well below 3 min, the CNR values decrease significantly and classical image-filtering techniques reach their limitation. A machine-learning approach shows promising results, enabling acquisition of a full tomography in only 6 s. Overall, the transmission X-ray microscopy instrument offers high temporal resolution in absorption and Zernike phase contrast, enabling in situ experiments at the beamline.

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“…Even if the phase shift is not acquired in a quantitative way, the contrast enhancement is sufficient for the structural analysis of many biomedical and biological applications. Most of the transmission X-ray microscope (TXM) instruments using Fresnel Zone Plates (FZP) offer fields of view (FoVs) smaller than 50 µm x 50 µm in absorption and Zernike phase contrast mode [ 19 – 21 ]. Therefore ultra-small samples (between 8 - 100 µm in diameter) are required for imaging, prepared by focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) [ 21 , 22 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This article is the first one to demonstrate that high-quality ROI nanotomography scans (in terms of contrast and resolution) can be obtained from millimeter sized tissue samples, without thinning or staining of the specimens. A large FoV was obtained using a beamshaper specifically designed for the presented TXM (see section 2 ), having 100 µm sub-fields, instead of the typically used 50 µm sub-fields [ 19 , 21 ]. The FoV can even be enlarged using stitching methods [ 19 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

X-ray Zernike phase contrast tomography: 3D ROI visualization of mm-sized mice organ tissues down to sub-cellular components

Longo¹,

Sancey²,

Flenner³

et al. 2020

Biomed. Opt. Express

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Thanks to its non-invasive nature, X-ray phase contrast tomography is a very versatile imaging tool for biomedical studies. In contrast, histology is a well-established method, though having its limitations: it requires extensive sample preparation and it is quite time consuming. Therefore, the development of nano-imaging techniques for studying anatomic details at the cellular level is gaining more and more importance. In this article, full field transmission X-ray nanotomography is used in combination with Zernike phase contrast to image millimeter sized unstained tissue samples at high spatial resolution. The regions of interest (ROI) scans of different tissues were obtained from mouse kidney, spleen and mammalian carcinoma. Thanks to the relatively large field of view and effective pixel sizes down to 36 nm, this 3D approach enabled the visualization of the specific morphology of each tissue type without staining or complex sample preparation. As a proof of concept technique, we show that the high-quality images even permitted the 3D segmentation of multiple structures down to a sub-cellular level. Using stitching techniques, volumes larger than the field of view are accessible. This method can lead to a deeper understanding of the organs’ nano-anatomy, filling the resolution gap between histology and transmission electron microscopy.

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Nanoporous gold: a hierarchical and multiscale 3D test pattern for characterizing X-ray nano-tomography systems

Cited by 17 publications

References 40 publications

A Review of Experimentally Informed Micromechanical Modeling of Nanoporous Metals: From Structural Descriptors to Predictive Structure–Property Relationships

A Review of Experimentally Informed Micromechanical Modeling of Nanoporous Metals: From Structural Descriptors to Predictive Structure–Property Relationships

Pushing the temporal resolution in absorption and Zernike phase contrast nanotomography: enabling fast in situ experiments

X-ray Zernike phase contrast tomography: 3D ROI visualization of mm-sized mice organ tissues down to sub-cellular components

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