Graduate Student Iona Binnie has received the Best Poster Award for her poster titled “Enhanced High Harmonic Generation Beamline for Ultrafast Resonant Magnetic Scattering” at the 2025 Joint MMM-Intermag Conference in New Orleans. Congratulations, Iona!
Today, President Biden awarded nearly 400 scientists and engineers the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers.
Established by President Clinton in 1996, PECASE recognizes scientists and engineers who show exceptional potential for leadership early in their research careers. The award recognizes innovative and far-reaching developments in science and technology, expands awareness of careers in science and engineering, recognizes the scientific missions of participating agencies, enhances connections between research and impacts on society, and highlights the importance of science and technology for our nation’s future.
From Day One of his Administration, President Biden has recognized the important role that science and technology plays in creating a better society. He made historic progress, increasing federally funded research and development and deploying past research and development at an unprecedented scale through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act.
This year’s awardees are employed or funded by 14 participating agencies within the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency, the intelligence community, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution.
STROBE and JILA graduate student Clay Klein has been awarded the prestigious 2025 Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship, presented by SPIE, the International Society for Optics and Photonics, and Siemens EDA. The scholarship, valued at $10,000, recognizes Klein’s outstanding contributions to the field of optics and photonics.
“I am honored to be awarded the Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship,” Klein stated. “This scholarship provides me with the exciting opportunity to share my research in this field and connect with others in the industry at the SPIE conference in February.”
Klein conducts research in the laboratories of JILA Fellows and University of Colorado Boulder Physics professors Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn. His work focuses on cutting-edge advancements in nanoscale extreme ultraviolet imaging science.
The award will be formally presented during the Welcome and Plenary Presentation at the SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning Conference in San Jose, California, on February 24, 2025. Congratulations Clay!
The NSLS-II is seeking an exceptional Postdoctoral Research Associate to join a co-design research effort that aims at advancing extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) nanofabrication well beyond the conventional lithography approaches, taking advantage of the world-leading expertise in X-ray metrology at NSLS-II, nanofabrication at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), and machine learning (ML) at the Computational Science Initiative (CSI).
The selected candidate will collaborate with scientists at CFN and CSI to optimize the EUVL performance through rigorous simulations as well as machine-learning networks that account for the light-matter interactions in various wavelength regimes, and real light source parameters such as coherence, polarization, monochromaticity, and flux uniformity. The candidate is also expected to conduct x-ray characterizations at beamlines, using state-of-the-art microscopy techniques like coherent scattering and ptychographic imaging. The candidate will actively collaborate with researchers at external facilities such as the Advanced Light Source of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the X-ray Interference Lithography beamline at Paul Scherrer Institute of Swiss Light Source. As part of the Imaging & Microscopy team at NSLS-II, the candidate will have opportunities to collaborate using the state-of-the-art capabilities of the imaging and microscopy beamlines at NSLS-II.
The Instrumentation Division seeks an exceptional Postdoctoral Research Associate to join a research effort on characterization of advanced microelectronic structures using ptychographic imaging techniques being developed at NSLS-II. The x-ray metrology pipeline will be utilized for characterization of microelectronic structures being developed at IO and performing x-ray measurements at NSLS-II. Examples of target areas include (but are not limited to): (i) characterization of defects due to electromigration effects in high-current density interconnects, (ii) characterization of mechanical stress and radiation-damage effects in photonics components integrated on a conventional silicon substrate and (iii) preparation of samples to be used for x-ray experiments at NSLS-II. The selected candidate will work with a team of scientists from NSLS-II, CFN (Centers for Functional Nanomaterials), CSI (Computational Science Initiative), and IO (Instrumentation Division), plus other postdoctoral researchers who are working on different aspects of the project (i.e., development of ptychographic imaging techniques, performing simulations and experiments that incorporate latest machine-learning algorithms). Furthermore, the successful candidate will collaborate broadly with the other members of IO and CFN, leveraging their expertise in design and fabrication of microelectronics.
This is a 2 year appointment.
This position will provide support to the US Naval Research Laboratory’s Optical Materials and Devices Branch (Code 5620). Code 5620 conducts a broad range of research and development activities. This position will support activities within the branch including but not limited to:
Minimum qualifications:
The preferred candidate will have:
For more details, please contact Jason Myers (jason.d.myers21.civ@us.navy.mil).
Summary: NRL is seeking a Research Scientist to work in the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Optical Materials and Devices Branch (Code 5620) within the Optical Sciences Division. Code 5620 conducts fundamental and applied research on a broad range of optical materials, photonic devices, and systems. Responsibilities include but are not limited to:
Minimum qualifications:
Preferred qualifications:
For more details, please contact Jason Myers (jason.d.myers21.civ@us.navy.mil).
The development of twisted van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures—where layers of 2D materials are stacked with controlled rotation angles—has opened exciting opportunities in quantum technologies. Notably, the twist interfaces in hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) can undergo structural transformations that support single-photon emission, making them promising for quantum sensing. However, imaging these buried interfaces using scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) has been challenging due to poor signal quality and geometric constraints.
In this work, we demonstrated the use of multislice ptychography (MSP), a sensitive coherent diffractive imaging technique, to visualize a twisted h-BN interface from a single-view dataset. STEM experiments were conducted on the TEAM I microscope at the National Center for Electron Microscopy, LBNL, where we acquired diffraction patterns from a 12-nm-thick twisted h-BN sample. Unlike conventional ptychographic approaches that yield a single complex image of the sample, MSP enables depth-sectioning during post-processing, producing a series of reconstructed image slices.
We successfully reconstructed 24 slices of the twisted h-BN heterostructure, resolving the top flake, interface, and bottom flake with a lateral resolution of 0.57 Å. Remarkably, a depth resolution of 2.5 nm was achieved without sample tilting—the highest reported depth resolution at the time of publication. This work highlights MSP’s potential to resolve nanoscale features in three dimensions without requiring tomographic data acquisition, paving the way for advanced quantum materials characterization.
Nanoscale metrology using coherent extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) or soft x-ray (SXR) light has unique advantages for a broad range of science and technology. Short EUV/SXR wavelengths have high sensitivity to small features, elemental composition, as well as electronic and magnetic orders. Tabletop high harmonic sources (HHG) have high spatial and temporal coherence, enabling precise phase-sensitive measurements of nanoscale functional properties (e.g. transport and mechanical), as well as diffraction-limited imaging with both amplitude and phase contrast. However, to date, most EUV HHG measurements were performed on hard materials, where damage is not significant concern.
STROBE scientists demonstrated that EUV HHG can rapidly and nondestructively characterize dose-sensitive materials such as polymer-based structures, with higher spatial resolution than visible light, and with far less damage than electron imaging. They collaborated with scientists from 3M to characterize polymer metamaterials, that have 2D periodic features less than the wavelength of visible light. Using HHG scatterometry, they extracted layer thicknesses, densities and top-surface geometry, without the need to coat or cut the sample. In contrast, SEM imaging of this polymer metamaterial requires that the sample be coated, and the high-energy electron beam can cause shrinking (see Fig.). Here, the significantly lower photon energy (~42eV) of EUV HHG compared with electron beams (~1-30keV) is key to lowering the dose, while maintaining high spatial resolution (<60nm transverse and <nm axial). Finally, correlative electron imaging, which requires highly specialized sample preparation to avoid sample damage, was implemented to validate the EUV HHG findings.