Laminography

Laminography

Synchrotron radiation-computed laminography (SRCL) is a technique for 3D tomographic imaging that is optimized for large planar specimens. It has found exciting new applications for micro- and nano-imaging in different application fields such as electronic devices, organic tissues, paintings, or paleontological specimens. SRCL is especially useful when it is required or desirable to leave the flat sample intact, either for non-destructive purposes or in order to study the sample in its natural environment. Within the framework of an international collaboration, the instruments installed by the partners at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) make full use of the advantages of several beamlines for absorption and phase contrast laminography (ID19), white beam fast laminography (ID15), and phase contrast and fluorescence laminography (ID22). Algorithms developed in-house enable laminography to image and reconstruct three-dimensionally large regions (which exceed the detector size) of the sample with high resolution by combining several scans carried out at adjacent sample positions.

 

Figure 1 depicts an example of white-beam fast laminography performed at the high-energy beamline ID15 of ESRF in collaboration with researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (USA). The aim of the experiment was a rapid and quantitative diagnosis of the early stage of failure in Pb free flip chip solder joints due to electromigration (EM) induced void nucleation and growth.

Currently, laminography techniques are being implemented at the ANKA storage ring. By combining laminography with projection microscopy and lens-based microscopy, the resolution limits will be pushed down to the nanometer range.

Laminography
(A) design of ID19 SRCL setup. (B) a photograph of the implementation.