Obtaining water microstructures is very difficult because of low viscosity and high surface tension. We produced stable freestanding thin films of pure water by x-ray bombardment of small liquid volumes in capillary tubes. A detailed characterization with phase-contrast radiology demonstrated a lifetime beyond 1h with no chemical stabilizer for micron-thickness films with half-millimeter-level diameter. This can be attributed to the interplay of two x-ray effects: water evaporation and surface charging.

Water vapor is lighter than air; this can enhance water evaporation by triggering vapor convection but there is little evidence. We directly visualize evaporation of nanoliter (2 to 700 nL) water droplets resting on silicon wafer in calm air using a high-resolution dual X-ray imaging method. Temporal evolutions of contact radius and contact angle reveal that evaporation rate linearly changes with surface area, indicating convective (instead of diffusive) evaporation in nanoliter water droplets. This suggests that convection of water vapor would enhance water evaporation at nanoliter scales, for instance, on microdroplets or inside nanochannels

We present a simple and highly versatile protocol for polymer ablation: hard x-ray irradiation makes it possible to rapidly depolymerize hyaluronan hydrogels and fabricate three-dimensional network of microchannels. Photodynamic and photochemical analyses show that x-ray irradiation directly cleaves the polymer backbone and the total dose controls the degradation kinetics. This nonthermal ablation protocol may offer opportunities for processing organic polymers and biological materials.

The new Brain Imaging Beamline (BIB) of the Taiwan Photon Source (TPS) has been commissioned and opened to users. The BIB and in particular its endstation are designed to take advantage of bright unmonochromatized synchrotron X-rays and target fast 3D imaging, ∼1 ms exposure time plus very high ∼0.3 µm spatial resolution. A critical step in achieving the planned performances was the solution to the X-ray induced damaging problems of the detection system. High-energy photons were identified as their principal cause and were solved by combining tailored filters/attenuators and a high-energy cut-off mirror. This enabled the tomography acquisition throughput to reach >1 mm3 min−1, a critical performance for large-animal brain mapping and a vital mission of the beamline.