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Capturing atomic snapshots in fractions of a second with X-ray lasers
What is it about?
We show how ultra-fast X-ray laser pulses – lasting just 30 femtoseconds – can be used to probe the atomic structure of materials in exceptional detail. Using a carefully designed experimental setup at the European X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) in Germany, we capture total scattering data and use pair distribution function (PDF) analysis to reveal the arrangement of atoms in space. We apply this method across a range of materials including crystals, glasses, liquids, and clusters in solution. For the first time, high-quality structural insights with high real-space resolution have been obtained from single XFEL pulses, opening the door to "molecular movies" of structural changes as they happen in real time!
Why is it important?
Many important processes in chemistry, materials science, and biology – such as catalysis, energy storage, and light-matter interactions – occur in just trillionths of a second. However, most tools for studying atomic structure are too slow to capture these fleeting changes. Our work demonstrates that XFELs can now be used to generate high-resolution structural snapshots on the same timescale as atomic motion. This is a crucial breakthrough: it allows researchers to track how materials behave under rapid stimuli, providing fundamental insights into function, reactivity, and dynamics that were previously out of reach.