TY - JOUR
T1 - Soft X-ray detectors based on SnS nanosheets for the water window region
AU - Shabbir, Babar
AU - Liu, Jingying
AU - Krishnamurthi, Vaishnavi
AU - Ayyubi, R. A.W.
AU - Tran, Kevin
AU - Tawfik, Sherif Abdulkader
AU - Hossain, M. Mosarof
AU - Khan, Hareem
AU - Wu, Yingjie
AU - Shivananju, Bannur Nanjunda
AU - Sagar, Rizwan Ur Rehman
AU - Mahmood, Asif
AU - Younis, Adnan
AU - Uddin, Md Hemayet
AU - Bukhari, Syed A.
AU - Walia, Sumeet
AU - Li, Yongxiang
AU - Spencer, Michelle J.S.
AU - Mahmood, Nasir
AU - Jasieniak, Jacek J.
N1 - Funding Information:
B.S. acknowledges funding support through Australian Synchrotron under reference number AS211/SXR/16827. J.J. acknowledges funding support through the Australian Research Council under Grant CE170100026 and the Australian‐China Science and Research Fund Joint Research Centre for Flexible Graphene Electronics. H.K., Y.L., and M.S. acknowledge funding support through the Australian Research Council under Grant DP180102752. The calculations were supported by computational resources provided by the Australian Government through NCI, Pawsey and MASSIVE, through grants obtained by MJSS from the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme and the Pawsey Energy and Resources Merit Allocation Scheme. N.M. would like to acknowledge the facilities as well as scientific and technical assistance from the staff of the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility (RMMF) and the Micro Nano Research Facility (MNRF) at RMIT University. N.M. also acknowledges Vice‐Chancellor fellowship scheme at RMIT University. This research was undertaken on a soft‐X‐ray beamline at the Australian Synchrotron, part of ANSTO. The authors acknowledge the use of the facilities at the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy (MCEM) and Monash X‐ray Platform (MXP). The authors thank Dr. Anton Tadich for developing a home‐built sample holder and assistance in experiments. This work was performed in part at the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication (MCN) in the Victorian Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH
PY - 2022/1/14
Y1 - 2022/1/14
N2 - The structural characteristics of biological specimens, such as wet proteins and fixed living cells, can be conveniently probed in their host aqueous media using soft X-rays in the water window region (200–600 eV). Conventional X-ray detectors in this area exhibit low spatial resolution, have limited sensitivity, and require complex fabrication procedures. Here, many of these limitations are overcome by introducing a direct soft X-ray detector based on ultrathin tin mono-sulfide (SnS) nanosheets. The distinguishing characteristic of SnS is its high photon absorption efficiency in the soft X-ray region. This factor enables the fabricated soft X-ray detectors to exhibit excellent sensitivity values on the order of (Formula presented.) at peak energies of ≈600 eV. The peak signal is found to be sensitive to the number of stacked SnS layers, with thicker SnS nanosheet assemblies yielding a peak response at higher energies and with peak sensitives of over 2.5 (Formula presented.) at 1 V. Detailed current–voltage and temporal characteristics of these detectors are also presented. These results showcase the excellent performance of SnS nanosheet-based soft X-ray detectors compared to existing direct soft X-ray detectors, including that of the emerging organic–inorganic perovskite class of materials.
AB - The structural characteristics of biological specimens, such as wet proteins and fixed living cells, can be conveniently probed in their host aqueous media using soft X-rays in the water window region (200–600 eV). Conventional X-ray detectors in this area exhibit low spatial resolution, have limited sensitivity, and require complex fabrication procedures. Here, many of these limitations are overcome by introducing a direct soft X-ray detector based on ultrathin tin mono-sulfide (SnS) nanosheets. The distinguishing characteristic of SnS is its high photon absorption efficiency in the soft X-ray region. This factor enables the fabricated soft X-ray detectors to exhibit excellent sensitivity values on the order of (Formula presented.) at peak energies of ≈600 eV. The peak signal is found to be sensitive to the number of stacked SnS layers, with thicker SnS nanosheet assemblies yielding a peak response at higher energies and with peak sensitives of over 2.5 (Formula presented.) at 1 V. Detailed current–voltage and temporal characteristics of these detectors are also presented. These results showcase the excellent performance of SnS nanosheet-based soft X-ray detectors compared to existing direct soft X-ray detectors, including that of the emerging organic–inorganic perovskite class of materials.
KW - direct imaging
KW - SnS nanosheets
KW - water window region
KW - X-ray detector
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85117898411&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/adfm.202105038
DO - 10.1002/adfm.202105038
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85117898411
SN - 1616-301X
VL - 32
JO - Advanced Functional Materials
JF - Advanced Functional Materials
IS - 3
M1 - 2105038
ER -