Reliable characterization of materials and nanostructured systems <<50nm using coherent EUV beams

Coherent extreme ultraviolet beams from tabletop high harmonic generation offer revolutionary capabilities for observing nanoscale systems on their intrinsic length and time scales. By launching and monitoring acoustic waves in such systems, we fully characterize sub-10nm films and find that the Poisson’s ratio of low-k dielectric materials does not stay constant as often assumed, but increases when bond coordination is bellow a critical value. Within the same measurement, by following the heat dissipation dynamics from nano-gratings of width 20-1000nm and different periodicities, we confirm the effects of the newly identified collectively-diffusive regime, where close-spaced nanowires cool faster than widely-spaced ones.