The intense beams of X-ray light at the user facilities operated by the PSI Center for Photon Science shed light on the smallest structures of matter.
Lab News & Scientific Highlights
Controlling magnetic waves in a spin liquid
Scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have shown that excitation of a spin liquid with intense THz pulses causes spins to appear and align within less than a picosecond. This induced coherent state causes a magnetic field to form inside the material, which is detected using ultrashort X-ray pulses at the X-ray Free Electron Laser SwissFEL.
Novel Photoresist Chemistry Enables Lithography Approaching Angstrom-Scale Resolution
Photoresist materials are crucial in the manufacturing of computer chips, where the circuits are initially printed in the photoresist using photolithography. As the demand for smaller and more precise circuitry in computer chips grows, photoresists must resolve features with smaller sizes and higher density. One of the factors determining the ultimate resolution in lithography is the molecular size/mass of the photoresists.
Researchers show that computer chips have the potential to become even smaller
Researchers at PSI reach unprecedented 5 nanometres half pitch resolution with EUV lithography.