In-house research

STEAM Project

STEAM – multiScale TErAhertz iMaging

 

Participants

Project Coordinator: Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A.
Project Partners: Central European Research Infrastructure Consortium
Contact point: project@ceric-eric.eu

Project Summary

Thanks to its penetration properties, chemical specificity, and safety, Terahertz (THz) light provides the perfect solution to address many scientific and societal problems in fields as diverse as biomedicine, cultural heritage, semiconductors, pharmaceutics, agriculture, biochemistry, security.

TeraFERMI is the THz beamline at FERMI, providing to external users both free-electron-laser based and table-top spectroscopic techniques. We now plan to develop the TeraFERMI imaging capabilities with the implementation of a new offline instrument allowing to perform both far-field and near-field THz hyperspectral imaging, from the mm to the nm-scale. To this aim, we will generate and detect THz pulses through photoconductive antennas operating at a 80 MHz repetition rate, feeding an imaging sample stage, a reflection head and a scattering near-field microscope.

Thanks to the coherence of the THz pulses, both amplitude- and phase-resolved images can be obtained, revealing details on the composition and morphology of the samples under study. With a total investment of about 500k€, this new instrument will be made available to external users within 24 months from the beginning of the project, and will increase the techniques portofolio of the Italian Partner Facility by extending its wavelengths range into the THz regime. 

Total budget for the implementation of the action: EUR 638.076

Timeline

Start Date: 11 October 2023
End Date: 27 August 2024