COSMIC, a multipurpose X-ray instrument, has made headway in the scientific community since its launch less than 2 years ago, with contributions in fields ranging from batteries to biominerals.
COSMIC is the brightest X-ray beamline at the ALS, a synchrotron that generates intense light — from infrared to X-rays — and delivers it to dozens of beamlines to carry out a range of simultaneous science experiments. COSMIC’s name is derived from coherent scattering and microscopy, which are two overarching X-ray techniques it is designed to carry out.
Its capabilities include world-leading soft X-ray microscopy resolution below 10 nanometers (billionths of a meter), extreme chemical sensitivity, ultrafast scanning speed as well as the ability to measure nanoscale chemical changes in samples in real time, and to facilitate the exploration of samples with a combination of X-ray and electron microscopy. Soft X-rays represent a low range in X-ray energies, while hard X-rays are higher in energy. Each type can address a different range of experiments.
COSMIC is setting the stage for a long-term project to upgrade the decades-old ALS. The effort, known as the ALS Upgrade (ALS-U), will replace most of the existing accelerator components with state-of-the-art technology, ensuring capabilities that will enable world-leading soft X-ray science for years to come. The upgrade will also further enhance COSMIC’s ability to capture nanoscale details in the structure and chemistry of a broad range of samples.
The expected 100-fold increase in X-ray brightness that ALS-U will deliver will provide a similar increase in imaging speed at COSMIC, and a more than threefold improvement in imaging resolution, enabling microscopy with single-nanometer resolution. Further, the technologies being developed now at COSMIC will be deployed at other beamlines at the upgraded ALS, making possible microscopy with higher X-ray energies for many more experiments. The instrument is one of many highly specialized resources available to scientists from around the world for free through a peer-reviewed proposal process.
A journal article, published Dec. 16, 2020, in Science Advances, highlights some of COSMIC’s existing capabilities and those that are on the way. The paper offers examples of 8-nanometer resolution achieved in imaging magnetic nanoparticles, the high-resolution chemical mapping of a battery cathode material during heating, and the high-resolution imaging of a frozen-hydrated yeast cell at COSMIC. (A cathode is one type of battery electrode, a component through which current flows.) These results serve as demonstration cases, revealing critical information about the structure and inner workings of these materials and opening the door for further insights across many fields of science.
Story Source: Materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.