NTHU research team develops photographing electrons technology

Members of the NTHU research team (right to left): Ming-Chang Chen, Po-Wei Lai, Ming-Shian Tsai, An-Yuan Liang, and Ming-Wei Lin. (Photo: National Tsing Hua University) 

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 22 (Bernama) -- National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) research team in Taiwan has captured an instant moment in the nanoworld by producing attosecond extreme ultraviolet pulses.

This light source can work as a nano camera to capture images of 5-nanometer-scale objects that move at an extremely high speed, such as an electron.

NTHU in a statement said this technology is expected to advance the design of next-generation transistors and memory chips with significantly increased speed for computers and communications.

Led by Associate Professor Ming-Chang Chen of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Associate Professor Ming-Wei Lin of the Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Science, the team is world’s first which developed a high-efficiency pulse compression technology for compressing a ytterbium-doped laser to 3,000 attoseconds.

When this light source was further focused into an inert gas, it produced extreme ultraviolet pulses with a duration of only 290 attoseconds.

Patents for this innovative technology have been applied for in the United States, Europe and Taiwan, and the team's research has been published by the top journal Science Advances.

With the goal of greatly reducing the pulse duration, the team focuses on developing a “spectrum broadening and pulse compression” technology by first stimulating more light waves of different frequencies in the space and then aligning the peaks of these new waves to superimpose them.

Repeating this process of spectral broadening and compression can subsequently shorten the pulse duration and increase the pulse peak.

The pulse duration can be compressed from 160,000 attoseconds to 290 attoseconds with a remarkable compression ratio of 550 via this technology.

-- BERNAMA