We are pleased to announce and invite you to one of our weekly online zoom events.
 

Lunch Chat: From tabletop to fingertip: Strategies for downscaling of X-ray Lasers to the lab-scale

X-ray lasers are currently giant installations attached at accelerators, focused to advanced physical-chemistry and spectroscopy. Their potential is thereafter minimally accessible for pioneering research, for manufacturing and process-monitoring, as well as  for education. Hencewith, there are research attempts to downscale X-ray lasers into compact lab-scale setups. The use of plasmas as gain media permitted to shrink systems down to a footprint of a tabletop, and perform a number of innovative applications.  The further miniaturization to x-ray on- a-chip is a visionary research we initiated, which will permit to drastically reduce the costs and boost the portability for  in situ measurements. Fundamental aspects and applications will be showcased.

Speaker

Dr. Davide Bleiner, IMP Institut für Mikrotechnik und Photonik, OST
Davide Bleiner completed his PhD in 2002 at the ETH Zurich working on laser ablation plasma mass spectrometry in the group of D. Günther. He was SNF professor in 2011 at the University of Bern (Feurer lab) running a 30 TW chirped pulse amplification system. The production of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) using laser-produced plasmas proved advantageous for  mask metrology and at-wavelength defect inspection to enable next-gen chips. In 2014 he was appointed head of the Advanced Analytical Technologies at the Empa, and in 2025 he joined OST in Buchs as coordinator of the competence domain photonics. Here he is establishing a cluster of materials analytics and tabletop XUV sources, to bridge the gap between industry and synchrotron capabilities.

Moderator

Dr. Christian Bosshard, Managing Director Swissphotonics
Dr. Christian Bosshard received his degree in Physics (1986) and his doctorate (1991, Silver medal award) from ETH. From 2001-2021 he was working at CSEM, first as Section Head and then as Vice President and Head Photonics. Since 2013 he is Managing Director of Swissphotonics. Christian is a Fellow of Optica, former Board Member of EPIC, and Member of the Board of the University of Basel.

Date
Tuesday, 24 March 2026

Time
12:00 - 12:45

Software
Zoom

Costs
free of charge

Registration only necessary once
This event series requires registration (see link above). We will send you the access information (Zoom-link and ID) by email after the registration. As the Zoom link remains the same every week, you do not need to register again for the following meetings.

Contact OST
Dr. Davide Bleiner
IMP Institut für Mikrotechnik und Photonik

Contact Swissphotonics
Dr. Christian Bosshard
Managing Director Swissphotonics
+41 79 405 1826

26 February 2026, Christian Bosshard