The imaging of failure in structural materials by synchrotron radiation X-ray microtomography

Owing to recent developments in CMOS technology, it is now possible to exploit tomographic microscopy at third-generation synchrotron facilities with unprecedented speeds. Despite this rapid technical progress, one crucial limitation for the investigation of realistic dynamic systems has remained: a generally short total acquisition time at high frame rates due to the limited internal memory of available detectors. To address and solve this shortcoming, a new detection and readout system, coined GigaFRoST, has been developed based on a commercial CMOS sensor, acquiring and streaming data continuously at 7.7 GB s−1 directly to a dedicated backend server. This architecture allows for dynamic data pre-processing as well as data reduction, an increasingly indispensable step considering the vast amounts of data acquired in typical fast tomographic experiments at synchrotron beamlines (up to several tens of TByte per day of raw data).

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GigaFRoST: the gigabit fast readout system for tomography

Plant roots and bacteria are capable of buffering erratic fluctuations of water content in their local soil environment by releasing a diverse, highly polymeric blend of substances (e.g. extracellular polymeric substances [EPS] and mucilage). Although this concept is well accepted, the physical mechanisms by which EPS and mucilage interact with the soil matrix and determine the soil water dynamics remain unclear. High-resolution X-ray computed tomography revealed that upon drying in porous media, mucilage (from maize [Zea mays L.] roots) and EPS (from intact biocrusts) form filaments and two-dimensional interconnected structures spanning across multiple pores. Unlike water, these mucilage and EPS structures connecting soil particles did not break up upon drying, which is explained by the high viscosity and low surface tension of EPS and mucilage. Measurements of water retention and evaporation with soils mixed with seed mucilage show how these oneand two-dimensional pore-scale structures affect macroscopic hydraulic properties (i.e., they enhance water retention, preserve the continuity of the liquid phase in drying soils, and decrease vapor diffusivity and local drying rates). In conclusion, we propose that the release of viscous polymeric substances and the consequent creation of a network bridging the soil pore space represent a universal strategy of plants and bacteria to engineer their own soil microhydrological niches where stable conditions for life are preserved.

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Microhydrological Niches in Soils : How Mucilage and EPS Alter the Biophysical Properties of the Rhizosphere and Other Biological Hotspots

All-solid-state batteries are considered as attractive options for next-generation energy storage
owing to the favourable properties (unit transference number and thermal stabilities) of solid
electrolytes. However, there are also serious concerns about mechanical deformation of solid
electrolytes leading to the degradation of the battery performance. Therefore, understanding
the mechanism underlying the electro-mechanical properties in SSBs are essentially important.
Here, we show three-dimensional and time-resolved measurements of an all-solid-state cell
using synchrotron radiation x-ray tomographic microscopy. We could clearly observe the
gradient of the electrochemical reaction and the morphological evolution in the composite
layer. Volume expansion/compression of the active material (Sn) was strongly oriented along
the thickness of the electrode. While this results in significant deformation (cracking) in the
solid electrolyte region, we also find organized cracking patterns depending on the particle
size and their arrangements. This study based on operando visualization therefore opens the
door towards rational design of particles and electrode morphology for all-solid-state batteries.

Operando Visualization of Morphological Dynamics in All‐Solid‐State Batteries

Investigations of mineral surface reactivity have recently challenged the classical approach of determining dissolution rates from mineral powders as crystals often exhibit heterogeneous and/or anisotropic reactivity. However, face-specific measurements are restricted to small areas at the surface and limited depth and ignore the contribution of the crystal edges to the whole process. Here, we provide a detailed characterization of the dissolution kinetics at pH 4.0 of a single calcite crystal in 3D using X-ray microtomography with a resolution less than 1 μm. The imaging method allows 3D mapping of the crystal surface topography, providing a description of the time-dependent local dissolution fluxes all over the crystal surface, and the calculation of the crystal dissolution rates. The global rate determined at the crystal scale integrates the contribution of all the crystal features, including the faces, edges, and corners, which can be detailed in the local rate distributions. Under acidic conditions, ...

Direct determination of dissolution rates at crystal surfaces using 3D X-ray microtomography

Sub-second full-field tomographic microscopy at third-generation synchrotron sources is a reality, opening up new possibilities for the study of dynamic systems in different fields. Sustained elevated data rates of multiple GB/s in tomographic experiments will become even more common at diffraction-limited storage rings, coming in operation soon. The computational tools necessary for the post-processing of raw tomographic projections have generally not experienced the same efficiency increase as the experimental facilities, hindering optimal exploitation of this new potential. We present here a fast, flexible, and user-friendly post-processing pipeline overcoming this efficiency mismatch and delivering reconstructed tomographic datasets just few seconds after the data have been acquired, enabling fast parameter and image quality evaluation as well as efficient post-processing of TBs of tomographic data. With this new tool, also able to accept a stream of data directly from a detector, few selected tomographic slices are available in less than half a second, providing advanced previewing capabilities paving the way to new concepts for on-the-fly control of dynamic experiments.

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Towards on-the-fly data post-processing for real-time tomographic imaging at TOMCAT.

Reconstruction of underconstrained tomographic data sets remains a major challenge. Standard analytical techniques frequently lead to unsatisfactory results due to insufficient information. Several iterative algorithms, which can easily integrate a priori knowledge, have been developed to tackle this problem during the last few decades. Most of these iterative algorithms are based on an implementation of the Radon transform that acts as forward projector. This operator and its adjoint, the backprojector, are typically called few times per iteration and represent the computational bottleneck of the reconstruction process. Here, we present a Fourier-based forward projector, founded on the regridding method with minimal oversampling. We show that this implementation of the Radon transform significantly outperforms in efficiency other state-of-the-art operators with O(N2log2N) complexity. Despite its reduced computational cost, this regridding method provides comparable accuracy to more sophisticated projectors and can, therefore, be exploited in iterative algorithms to substantially decrease the time required for the reconstruction of underconstrained tomographic data sets without loss in the quality of the results.

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Alain Studer

Papers

Towards on-the-fly data post-processing for real-time tomographic imaging at TOMCAT.

A Forward Regridding Method With Minimal Oversampling for Accurate and Efficient Iterative Tomographic Algorithms