Shrinking X-ray absorption spectroscopy

Abstract

X-ray absorption spectroscopy is a powerful method used by chemists, biologists, and materials scientists to analyze solids, liquids, and gases. The technique can identify elements and provides information about oxidation states, bonding coordination, and other structural features. Invariably, the analytical work occurs at synchrotrons because those large facilities are uniquely capable of generating the intense, tunable X-rays needed to make the measurements. Thanks to an advance in laser spectroscopy, researchers eventually might perform such analyses with compact benchtop lasers (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2018, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.093002). Such a development would allow scientists to bypass the challenges of being approved to work at a synchrotron and traveling to those facilities, of which there are only about 60 worldwide. To generate benchtop X-rays, Dimitar Popmintchev, Margaret Murnane, Henry Kapteyn, and coworkers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, focus mid-infrared laser light into a waveg...