UIC researchers help report groundbreaking discovery
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University of Illinois Chicago chemical engineers have helped report the world’s first x-ray of a single atom, which could have a huge impact on environmental, medical, and material sciences.
The findings, published in the scientific journal Nature, from a multi-institutional team of scientists set a new standard for X-rays on the microscopic level. X-rays are used to study the composition of samples and materials and examine very small targets in medicine, biology, physics, and engineering.
Associate Professor Anh Ngo, Research Assistant Professor Naveen Dandu, and postdoctoral researcher Tomas Rojas worked with researchers from Argonne National Laboratory and Ohio University to conduct theoretical calculations and develop a model to explain the groundbreaking experimental data.
Previously, the smallest sample captured by an X-ray was 10,000 atoms. The research team designed a new synchrotron instrument located at the Advanced Photon Source of Argonne National Laboratory, using a sharp metal tip detector placed in extreme proximity to an iron or a terbium atom.
Ngo and Naveen’s model measures single-atom chemical states and x-ray-excited resonance tunneling (X-ERT), the method they developed, which allows them to detect how orbitals of a single molecule orient on a material surface using synchrotron X-rays.
Using metal ions, researchers, led by Saw Wai Hla, Ohio University professor of physics, and Argonne National Laboratory scientist, used synchrotron X-ray scanning tunneling microscopy (SX-STM). SX-STM is a technique that can replace conventional detectors with a specialized detector made of a sharp metal tip positioned at extreme proximity to the sample to collect X-ray-excited electrons. Using SX-STM, Hla and his team were able to conduct both measurement regimes simultaneously.
If X-rays could be used to detect just one atom, it would further revolutionize their applications to an unprecedented level, from quantum information technology to environmental and medical research.
This work has the potential to bring about a significant transformation in the field of materials detection. The experiments produced X-ray absorption spectra — “fingerprints” that could be used to successfully identify the target atoms and their chemical properties. In the future, scientists could use the method to identify trace amounts of different elements in materials important for applications in quantum technology or in samples for medical or environmental research.
Hla, and his team were funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences.