Synchrotron-based X-ray Phase Contrast Imaging at the TOMCAT beamline

by Anne Bonnin (TOMCAT Team, SLS PSI)

Friday 15 Sept 2017, 16:30 → 17:30 UTC

Marie Curie Briefing Room (ALBA Synchrotron)

At the Swiss Light Source (SLS, Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland), the TOmographic Microscopy and Coherent rAdiology experimentTs (TOMCAT) beamline offers multiple X-ray imaging end-stations for absorption and phase contrast imaging techniques: propagation-based, grating-based (Differential Phase Contrast) and Zernike Phase Contrast (ZPC). Sitting on a 2.9T suberbend with a critical energy of 11.1keV, the beamline can be operated in monochromatic mode thanks to a Double Crystal Multilayer Monochromator (DCMM) that covers an energy range between 8 and 45 keV with a bandwidth of a few percent down to 10⁻⁴. The beamline can also be operated in white-beam mode, providing the ideal conditions for ultra-fast acquisitions. Several microscopes are available for user operation, which cover isotropic voxel sizes from 60 nm up to 11 microns, allowing a broad range of applications: biology, geology, material characterization, paleontology, etc. In this talk, the latest achievements realized in terms of instrumentation development will be presented and illustrated with concrete cases, more specifically, in biology and material sciences.