High coherence and intensity at FERMI enables new X-ray interfacial probe

Interfaces are involved in a wide range of systems and have significant implications in many fields of scientific and technological advancement, often determining device performance or chemical reactivity. Vital examples include solar cells, protein folding, and computer chips. A class of commonly used surface science techniques are comprised of even-ordered nonlinear spectroscopies (i.e., second harmonic and sum frequency generation) which exhibit no response in centrosymmetric media due to symmetry constraints.As a result, they have been widely used at optical wavelengths to explore physical and chemical properties of interfaces, where centrosymmetry is broken. Extending this to x-ray wavelengths would effectively combine the element specificity and spectral sensitivity of x-ray spectroscopy with the rigorous interfacial/surface specificity of optical even-ordered nonlinear spectroscopies. Unfortunately, at hard x-ray energies (x-ray wavelength order of the spacing between atoms) these even-ordered nonlinear spectroscopies are effectively bulk probes, as each individual atom breaks inversion symmetry. As soft x-ray wavelengths fall in between the UV and hard x-ray regimes, there has been uncertainty regarding the interface specificity of soft x-ray second harmonic generation.

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Figure: (extract)  Experimental Design. X-ray pulses are passed through a 2 mm iris and focused onto the graphite sample at normal incidence. The transmitted beam is then passed through a 600 nm aluminum filter and onto a spectrometer grating, spatially resolving the second harmonic signal from the fundamental. Inset: A schematic energy level diagram of the second harmonic generation process. (entire figure here)