Abstract
The availability of intense soft x-ray beams with tunable energy and polarization has pushed the development of highly sensitive, element-specific, and noninvasive microscopy techniques to investigate condensed matter with high spatial and temporal resolution. The short wavelengths of soft x-rays promise to reach spatial resolutions in the deep single-digit nanometer regime, providing unprecedented access to magnetic phenomena at fundamental length scales. Despite considerable efforts in soft x-ray microscopy techniques, a two-dimensional resolution of 10 nm has not yet been surpassed in direct imaging. Here, we report on a significant step beyond this long-standing limit by combining newly developed soft x-ray Fresnel zone plate lenses with advanced precision in scanning control and careful optical design. With this approach, we achieve an image resolution of 7 nm. By combining this highly precise microscopy technique with the x-ray magnetic circular dichroism effect, we reveal dimensionality effects in an ensemble of interacting magnetic nanoparticles. Such effects are topical in current nanomagnetism research and highlight the opportunities of high-resolution soft x-ray microscopy in magnetism research and beyond.
Highlights
The use of x-rays to investigate the structure and properties of matter is an active field in scientific research [1]
We demonstrate this in two scanning x-ray transmission microscopes (STXMs) at the PolLux [22] and HERMES [23] beamlines at the Swiss Light Source and Synchrotron Soleil, respectively
We demonstrate x-ray microscopy with structural resolution well below 10 nm
Summary
The use of x-rays to investigate the structure and properties of matter is an active field in scientific research [1]. A multitude of scientific questions in the field of magnetism concerns length scales of some nanometers, such as ultra-small magnetic skyrmions for memory applications [10,11], or the nature of the coupling of adjacent magnetic nanoparticles and stacked thin films In this context, x-ray-based methods with high resolving capabilities are ideally suited for microscopic applications that directly probe the magnetic properties of the sample under a wide range of excitations such as externally applied fields, current pulses, or radiofrequency waves. X-ray-based methods with high resolving capabilities are ideally suited for microscopic applications that directly probe the magnetic properties of the sample under a wide range of excitations such as externally applied fields, current pulses, or radiofrequency waves Another strong argument for x-ray microprobes is the fact that the perturbation that they induce to magnetic configurations is much less significant than, for instance, is induced by the use of magnetic or electron microprobes [12,13,14]. We demonstrate this in two scanning x-ray transmission microscopes (STXMs) at the PolLux [22] and HERMES [23] beamlines at the Swiss Light Source and Synchrotron Soleil, respectively
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