New Publication! Well Done PhD Researcher James Nohl.

Congratulations to James Nohl on his new publication in Materials Today Advances. It has been a long time in the making, and it is wonderful to see this paper published.

The paper discusses the development and application of a novel method for chemical imaging (CI) at the nanoscale using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). This technique, called Colour Enriched Secondary Electron Hyperspectral Imaging (CSEHI), enhances surface-sensitive CI by assigning secondary electron emissions in up to three energy ranges to RGB image colour channels. The process can be performed manually, requiring user input, or automatically using a non-negative matrix factorization (NNMF) method.

Manual CSEHI is demonstrated on a variety of materials, including lithium metal anode (LMA) surfaces, art history samples, and zoological specimens. Automated CSEHI is evaluated against manual methods, showing its effectiveness in tracking changes on LMA surfaces and revealing nanostructures in peacock feathers and spider silk.

The study demonstrates that CSEHI can differentiate and track various lithium compounds on LMA surfaces and provide insights into surface chemical distributions that are not visible with existing techniques. This approach has significant potential for advancing the analysis of materials in both scientific research and industrial applications.