A versatile high-speed x-ray microscope for high-throughput sub-10nm Imaging

We have developed a next-generation scanning x-ray microscope RASMI (RApid Scanning Microscopy Instrument) for high-throughput tomographic imaging. RASMI is installed at the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe (HXN) beamline at NSLS-II and is capable of manipulating a pair of 1D multilayer Laue lenses (MLLs) and 2D optics (both zone plates and monolithically assembled 2D MLLs). The sample scanning stage utilizes line-focusing interferometry as an encoder while performing fly-scanning data acquisition. The system can be configured for both position- and time-triggering modes during flyscanning. The initial x-ray imaging of a test pattern yielded a sample-limited resolution of ∼6nm in 2D with a detectorlimited data acquisition rate of 1.25kHz during ptychography measurements. To demonstrate the 3D data acquisition capability, we successfully collected a nano-tomography dataset, where an integrated circuit sample of 2μm in diameter and 3μm in height had been imaged in less than 1 hour with sub-20nm resolution and signal quality-limited data acquisition rate of 500Hz. RASMI can be adopted for in-vacuum applications and is a foundation for the next-generation scanning microscopy systems to be developed and commissioned at NSLS-II.