A team of researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder has generated a laser-like light beam at super-short wavelengths that could make it possible to peer into single cells and to produce computer chips with features more than 1,000 times finer than the thickness of a human hair.
The device, which is small enough to fit on a dining room table, generates coherent light in the extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, region of the spectrum also called the "soft" x-ray region. A tabletop soft x-ray laser could prove to be a major development to further research in nanotechnology, according to the researchers.
"This new technology could be used in the future to make equipment to produce the next generation of computer microchips, or microscopes that could produce images of cells at extremely high resolution," said lead author Randy Bartels, a professional research assistant at JILA, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Bartels completed the work in the lab of CU-Boulder professors Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn.
A paper on the subject by Bartels, Kapteyn, Murnane, Ariel Paul and Sterling Backus of JILA appears in the July 19 issue of the journal Science. Ivan Christov of Sofia University, Yanwei Liu and David Attwood of the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Chris Jacobsen of State University of New York at Stony Brook also contributed to the paper.
"This ability to make fully coherent light in a new region of the spectrum makes it possible to apply laser techniques to a variety of new types of experimental investigation," said Kapteyn, a CU-Boulder physics professor and member of the research team.
For example, the researchers made several holograms, or high-resolution 3-D images, using the laser. Previously, the generation of fully coherent light has been for the most part limited to visible and longer wavelength regions of the spectrum, according to Kapteyn.
While other more complex devices can be made to generate higher power light in the EUV, and electron microscopes can already view ultrasmall structures, this technology combines short pulses with the ability to obtain an ultratight focus. This combination of qualities will make possible new studies of the dynamics of chemical reactions, he said.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.
The physics department is part of CU-Boulder's College of Arts and Sciences.