Experimental X-ray Physics

- for a better environment

Prof. Dag Werner Breiby

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Recent highlights:

26 January 2024: Seminars at the Department of Physics with Assoc. Prof. Auke Barnhoorn (TU Delft) and Assoc. Prof. Erika Tudisco (Lund University).

25 January 2024: Aldritt Scaria Madathiparambil successfully defended his Ph.D. Thanks also to the committee (Assoc. Prof. Barnhoorn, Assoc. Prof. Erika Tudisco, and Assoc. Prof. Antje van der Net) for making this a memorable day!

26 December 2023: At long last, our article on Haines jumps is finally published, in PNAS! Kudos to the authors, and Kim Robert in particular, for this great accomplishment! This work also featured as the top headline news story of the ESRF.

Background:

I obtained my master’s degree in physics at NTNU in 1999. As part of the degree, I spent one year at the University of California at Berkeley, where I followed courses in theoretical physics. The subsequent thesis work was on neutron wave guides for the (now closed) reactor at The Institute for Energy Technology (www.ife.no) at Kjeller just outside Oslo.

My PhD (NTNU, 1999-2003) concerned nanoscale structures, morphologies, and molecular anisotropy in semiconducting polymers - the class of materials that forms the basis for today’s OLED screens. The studies were performed using X-ray diffraction as the main tool, including grazing incidence studies (GIXD) and reflectivity (XRR). Several of the articles were based on synchrotron studies, mainly at ESRF in Grenoble. Prof. Emil J. Samuelsen supervised the PhD studies.

After the PhD, wishing to further refine the knowledge gained, I continued as a postdoc (2003-2007) under the auspices of Prof. Martin M. Nielsen, first at Risø National Laboratory (now a part of the Technical University of Denmark, DTU), financed by the European Science Foundation (ESF EUROCORES Self-Organised NanoStructures SONS). Later, I spent one semester at the CoE Centre for Molecular Movies at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. During these postdoc years, I contributed to a series of high impact publications on thin organic films, mainly semiconducting polymers, but also liquid crystals, in close collaboration with many leading European research organizations (including Cambridge University, ETH, University of Eindhoven, and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research). These investigations were usually combined with other experimental or theoretical efforts to yield insight into how soft materials behave the way they do. A recurring topic was to correlate the charge-carrier mobility characteristics in field-effect transistors with thin-film structures in organic electronics.

During a short stint as associate professor at Høgskolen i Vestfold (now University of South-Eastern Norway, USN) I was introduced to microsystems, in particular solid-liquid interface diffusion (SLID) bonding for electronics packaging.

At NTNU, my research interests have been revolving around X-ray studies of materials, however, with a much wider scope than previously – combining scattering and diffraction with imaging methods to obtain multidimensional real-space images. A specialty of our X-ray Physics Group is in-situ experiments, for example observing the reaction fronts of CO₂ interacting with cement under conditions relevant to carbon sequestration and storage (CCS). The choice of materials has also been widened to include both specimen of biological interest (mainly bone) and geophysics (mainly shales and cement) – motivated by our aspiration to contribute to a better society, notably through the green shift.

As a consequence of these priorities, it has also been natural for the group to work actively in the optical domain. We have a sizable activity within computational imaging, where efforts are made to augment the capabilities of ordinary microscopes by utilizing computers as an integral part of the imaging process. In other words, computer algorithms combined with coherent light illumination are used to improve the resolution and contrast, typically also to achieve a larger depth-of-focus and quantitative phase information – information that cannot be obtained by conventional hardware-based microscopy.

In particular, we are highly interested in the development of coherent X-ray diffraction imaging (CXDI) techniques, which is a lensless imaging technique based on iterative phase reconstruction from diffraction images. CXDI, including ptychography, can be performed under relevant/realistic conditions, including high temperatures and high gas pressures. Efforts are thus made to perform in situ imaging experiments with a resolution approaching 10 nm, in collaboration with the coherent scattering groups at the Swiss Light Source in Villigen outside Zürich and at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. We are also increasingly working with visual light computational microscopy methods, in particular Fourier Ptychography.

Another line of research is Computational Tomography (CT) which we perform on a wide range of materials, both using our Nikon HT 220 micro-CT scanner, and synchrotron beamlines like TOMCAT at SLS and ID19 at ESRF. Efforts are put into developing schemes for dynamic CT. We have several on-going projects relating to porous media, ranging from mesoporous thin films, via foams, to bones and rocks. These studies include detailed studies of Haines’ jumps, frost heave and multiphase flow – all motivated by societal/environmental concerns.

We are frequent users of synchrotron radiation, mainly at SLS, HASYLAB and ESRF. GISAXS / GIWAXS are important techniques for revealing structures in thin films, and we have developed considerable expertise in collecting, interpreting and modeling this kind of data, increasingly often in collaboration with experts on density functional theory.

The group is generally interested in microsystems (MEMS) and is collaborating with the nationally leading institutions (University of South-Eastern Norway (USN in Vestfold)) in this field.

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Short CV

History of external funding:

	Project
	Fast 4D-CT (Equinor direct funding of PhD student) project leader (2023 - 2026) HeaLiSelf (RCN: Researcher project for technological convergence, led by Prof. Steve Boles) (2024 – 2027) SaltyPore (RCN: FRINATEK, young scientist grant to Dr. Elvia Chavez) (2023 – 2026) ICONIC (RCN: FRINATEK, led by Dr. Basab Chattopadhyay) (2020 – 2025) PoreFlow (RCN: NANO2021) project leader (2020 - 2024) 4D-CT (RCN: FRINATEK) project leader (2018 – 2026) COMPMIC (RCN: SYNKNØYT/NANO2021) project leader (2018 – 2023) CuttingEdge (RCN: PETROMAKS2) (2017 – 2023) CO2PLUG (RCN: CLIMIT) (2015 – 2018) RECX - National research infrastructure for X-ray scattering and imaging (RCN: INFRASTRUKTUR) (2010 – 2018) Towards coherent imaging of working catalyst nanoparticles (RCN: SYNKROTRON) project leader (2010 – 2014) Expériences et simulation de clichés GISAXS de films minces mésoporeux ou fonctionnalisé (RCN: Aurora) project leader
	EXCITE (EU: INFRAIA) (2020 – 2025) RAtional DEsign of blends for bulk heterojunction SOLar cells - RADESOL (M-ERA.NET, led by Prof. Dirk Vanderzande) (2014 – 2018)
	ColdWear (RCN: KMB) (2008 – 2013)