Multimodal hard x-ray spectro-microscopy

Multimodal X-ray spectro-microscopy, which incorporates complementary imaging techniques, plays a crucial role in characterizing crystal/electronic structures and chemical environments with high spatial resolution. Here, we employ multimodal spectro-microscopy, combining X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM), X-ray ptychography, and scanning X-ray diffraction microscopy (SXDM) to investigate Au microcrystallites hosting unconventional lattices. X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectral information, covering the Au L3 edge, is simultaneously acquired from fluorescence, transmission, and phase contrasts data. The presented approach is generic and applicable to other sample systems and measurement techniques such as in three dimensions.