Opportunities for multiple-beam synchrotron-based mid-infrared imaging at IRENI

A new mid-infrared beamline (IRENI) extracting 320 hor. × 25 vert. mrads2 of radiation providing wide-field illumination for a Bruker Hyperion 3000 IR microscope equipped with an infrared focal plane array (FPA) detector has recently been commissioned at the Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC) in Stoughton, WI. The swath of radiation from the SRC is extracted as 12 beams and recombined into a 3 × 4 bundle of beams that is refocused onto the sample plane of the infrared microscope illuminating a 40 μm × 60 μm sample area. With this new facility chemical images with high diffraction-limited resolution, for wavelengths across the mid-IR concurrently, can be obtained in minutes. Applications of biomedical, biological and cultural heritage interest show the broad applicability of this new facility. The examples presented here include images of fixed single cells, time dependent in vivo measurements of a single cell and layered organic/inorganic materials.