micro-XANES mapping of buried interfaces: pushing microbeam techniques to the nanoscale

A specific preparation procedure makes possible to obtain in one
shot structural and compositional characterization of a buried
interface at the nanometre scale using a micrometre scale probe.
A specific example based on dispersive l-XAS, micro X-ray
absorption spectroscopy, shows that nearly-atomic scale changes
in local structure, composition, as well as local disorder are
faithfully detected. The approach could in principle be applied to
any probe with a micrometric resolution.