Implementation of a dual-phase grating 1 interferometer for multi-scale characterization of 2 building materials by tunable dark-field imaging

Published

March 1, 2024

Author(s)

Daniel Josell, Caori Organista, Ruizhi Tang, Zhitian Shi, Konstantins Jefimovs, Lucia Romano, Simon Splindler, Pierre Kibleur, Benjamin Blykers, Marco Stampanoni, Matthieu Boone

Abstract

The multi-scale characterization of building materials is necessary to understand macroscale mechanical processes, with the goal of developing new, better materials aimed at sustainability. In materials science, imaging methods are often used to characterize the microscale. However, these methods compromise the volume of interest to achieve a higher resolution. Dark-field contrast (DFC) is being investigated to characterize building materials in length scales smaller than the resolution of the imaging system, allowing a direct comparison of micro- and nanoscopic features and overcoming the scale limitations of current characterization methods. This work extends the implementation of a dual-phase x-ray grating interferometer (DP-XGI) for DF imaging in a lab-based setup. The interferometer was developed to operate at two different design energies of 22.0 keV and 40.8 keV and designed to characterize nanoscale-size features in millimeter-sized material samples. The good performance of the interferometer in the low energy range (LER) is demonstrated by the DF retrieval of natural pine wood samples. In addition, a high energy range (HER) configuration is proposed, resulting in higher visibility and good sensitivity over a wider range of correlation lengths in the nanoscale range. Its potential for the characterization of mineral building materials is illustrated by the DF imaging of a Ketton limestone. Additionally, the capability of the DP-XGI to distinguish features in the nanoscale range is proven with the dark-field of Silica nanoparticles at different correlation lengths of calibrated sizes of 106 nm, 261 nm, and 507 nm.

Citation

Scientific Reports

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-50424-6

Local Download

Keywords

Gratings, imaging, phase contrast imaging, gold, superfill

Citation

Josell, D. , Organista, C. , Tang, R. , Shi, Z. , Jefimovs, K. , Romano, L. , Splindler, S. , Kibleur, P. , Blykers, B. , Stampanoni, M. and Boone, M. (2024), Implementation of a dual-phase grating 1 interferometer for multi-scale characterization of 2 building materials by tunable dark-field imaging, Scientific Reports, [online], https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-50424-6, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=956553 (Accessed December 2, 2024)