Experimental X-ray Physics
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for a better environment
Prof. Dag Werner
Breiby
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Looking for a master
project in physics? – Please contact the X-ray Physics Group!
Recent highlights:
July 2025: Article
on physics informed AI for reconstruction of dynamic CT published in
Communications Physics.
10 June 2025: Fazel
Mirzaei successfully defended his Ph.D. Prof. Luise Theil Kuhn (DTU, Denmark)
and Dr. David Wragg (IFE, Norway) were the external opponents, and Prof. Turid
Reenaas was the local organizer.
20 March 2025: Mahdieh
Gholamimayani successfully defended her Ph.D. at University of South-Eastern
Norway. Her main supervisor was Prof. M. Nadeem Akram.
28 May 2024: Prof.
Robert Feidenhans’l (European XFEL) held a seminar at NTNU as part of his visit
to our research group.
27 May 2024: Kim
Robert Tekseth successfully defended his Ph.D.
Thanks
also to the committee (Prof. Robert Feidenhans’l, Prof. Veerle Cnudde and Prof.
Maria Fernandino) for making this a fantastic day!
Trondheim
was also at its best with 25 oC in May!
26 January 2024: Seminars at the Department of Physics with Assoc. Prof.
Auke Barnhoorn (TU Delft) and Assoc. Prof. Erika Tudisco (Lund University).
25 January 2024: Aldritt Scaria Madathiparambil successfully defended
his Ph.D. Thanks also to the committee (Assoc. Prof. Barnhoorn, Assoc. Prof.
Erika Tudisco, and Assoc. Prof. Antje van der Net) for making this a memorable
day!
26 December 2023: Our article on Haines jumps is published in PNAS! Kudos to
the authors, and Kim Robert in particular, for this great accomplishment! This
work also featured as the top
headline news story of the ESRF.
Background:
I obtained my master’s degree in
physics at NTNU in 1999. As part of the degree, I spent one year at the
University of California at Berkeley, where I followed courses in theoretical
physics. The subsequent thesis work was on neutron wave guides for the (now
closed) reactor at The Institute for Energy Technology (www.ife.no) at Kjeller just outside Oslo.
My PhD (NTNU, 1999-2003) concerned
nanoscale structures, morphologies, and molecular anisotropy in semiconducting
polymers - the class of materials that forms the basis for today’s OLED
screens. The studies were performed using X-ray diffraction as the main tool,
including grazing incidence studies (GIXD) and reflectivity (XRR). Several of
the articles were based on synchrotron studies, mainly at ESRF in Grenoble.
Prof. Emil J. Samuelsen supervised the PhD studies.
After the PhD, wishing to further
refine the knowledge gained, I continued as a postdoc (2003-2007) under the
auspices of Prof. Martin M. Nielsen, first at Risø National Laboratory (now a
part of the Technical University of Denmark, DTU), financed by the European
Science Foundation (ESF EUROCORES Self-Organised NanoStructures SONS). Later, I spent one semester at the CoE Centre for Molecular Movies at the Niels Bohr
Institute, University of Copenhagen. During these postdoc years, I contributed
to a series of high impact publications on thin organic films, mainly
semiconducting polymers, but also liquid crystals, in close collaboration with
many leading European research organizations (including Cambridge University,
ETH, University of Eindhoven, and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer
Research). These investigations were usually combined with other experimental
or theoretical efforts to yield insight into how soft materials behave the way
they do. A recurring topic was to correlate the charge-carrier mobility
characteristics in field-effect transistors with thin-film structures in
organic electronics.
During a short stint as associate
professor at Høgskolen i Vestfold (now University of
South-Eastern Norway, USN) I was introduced to
microsystems, in particular solid-liquid interface diffusion (SLID) bonding for
electronics packaging.
At NTNU, my research interests have
been revolving around X-ray studies of materials, however, with a much wider
scope than previously – combining scattering and diffraction with imaging
methods to obtain multidimensional real-space images. A specialty of our X-ray
Physics Group is in-situ experiments, for example observing the reaction fronts
of CO2 interacting with cement under conditions relevant to carbon
sequestration and storage (CCS). The
choice of materials has also been widened to include both specimen of
biological interest (mainly bone) and geophysics (mainly shales and cement) –
motivated by our aspiration to contribute to a better society, notably through
the green shift.
As a consequence of these
priorities, it has also been natural for the group to work actively in the
optical domain. We have a sizable activity within computational imaging,
where efforts are made to augment the capabilities of ordinary microscopes by
utilizing computers as an integral part of the imaging process. In other words,
computer algorithms combined with coherent light illumination are used to
improve the resolution and contrast, typically also to achieve a larger
depth-of-focus and quantitative phase information – information that cannot be
obtained by conventional hardware-based microscopy.
In particular, we are highly
interested in the development of coherent X-ray diffraction imaging (CXDI)
techniques, which is a lensless imaging technique based on iterative phase
reconstruction from diffraction images. CXDI, including ptychography, can be
performed under relevant/realistic conditions, including high temperatures and
high gas pressures. Efforts are thus made to perform in situ imaging experiments with a resolution approaching 10 nm, in
collaboration with the coherent scattering groups at the Swiss Light Source in Villigen outside
Zürich and at the European Synchrotron Radiation
Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. We are also increasingly working with visual
light computational microscopy methods, in particular Fourier Ptychography.
Another line of research is
Computational Tomography (CT) which we perform on a wide range of materials,
both using our Nikon HT 220 micro-CT scanner, and synchrotron beamlines like
TOMCAT at SLS and ID19 at ESRF. Efforts are put into developing schemes for
dynamic CT. We have several on-going projects relating to porous media, ranging
from mesoporous thin films, via foams, to bones and rocks. These studies
include detailed studies of Haines’ jumps, frost heave and multiphase flow –
all motivated by societal/environmental concerns.
We are frequent users of synchrotron
radiation, mainly at SLS, HASYLAB and ESRF. GISAXS / GIWAXS are important
techniques for revealing structures in thin films, and we have developed
considerable expertise in collecting, interpreting and modeling this kind of
data, increasingly often in collaboration with experts on density functional
theory.
The group is generally interested in
microsystems (MEMS) and is collaborating with the nationally leading
institutions (University of South-Eastern Norway (USN in Vestfold)) in this
field.
History
of external funding:
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Fast 4D-CT (Equinor direct funding of PhD student) project leader (2023 - 2026) HeaLiSelf (RCN:
Researcher project for technological convergence, led by Prof. Steve Boles) (2024
– 2027) SaltyPore (RCN: FRINATEK, young scientist grant to Dr. Elvia Chavez) (2023 – 2026) ICONIC (RCN: FRINATEK, led by Dr. Basab
Chattopadhyay) (2020 – 2025) PoreFlow (RCN: NANO2021) project leader (2020 - 2024) 4D-CT (RCN: FRINATEK) project leader (2018
– 2026) COMPMIC (RCN: SYNKNØYT/NANO2021) project leader (2018 – 2023) CuttingEdge (RCN: PETROMAKS2) (2017 – 2023) CO2PLUG (RCN: CLIMIT) (2015 – 2018) RECX - National research infrastructure for X-ray scattering and imaging (RCN: INFRASTRUKTUR) (2010 – 2018) Towards coherent imaging of working catalyst nanoparticles (RCN: SYNKROTRON) project leader (2010
– 2014) Expériences et simulation de clichés GISAXS de films minces
mésoporeux ou fonctionnalisé (RCN: Aurora) project
leader |
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EXCITE (EU: INFRAIA) (2020 – 2025) RAtional DEsign
of blends for bulk heterojunction SOLar cells - RADESOL (M-ERA.NET, led by Prof. Dirk
Vanderzande) (2014 – 2018) |
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ColdWear
(RCN: KMB) (2008 – 2013) |
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