Physicist, NSLS-II HXN Nanoprobe Beamline, Photon Division
Hanfei Yan earned his B.S. in Physics in 1999 from Peking University, China, and an M.S. in Physics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2001. He subsequently enrolled in Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science to pursue a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering, starting his research in synchrotron science. His thesis work includes x-ray dynamical diffraction effects in single crystals and microdiffraction techniques for stress/strain measurement. After graduating from Columbia University in 2005, Yan accepted a postdoc position at the Center for Nanoscale Materials of Argonne National Laboratory. Over there he played a critical role in the development of a novel x-ray focusing optics called multilayer Laue lens (MLL). He developed a theory to address the fundamental question whether there is a focusing limit for X-ray optics and demonstrated experimentally the focusing capability of MLL.
In 2007, Yan joined the NSLS-II Project to develop the 1-nm imaging capability using MLLs for the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe beamline (HXN) and has since been leading HXN's R&D efforts. His research focuses on theoretical and experimental studies on nanofocusing optics, dynamical diffraction theory, novel x-ray microscopic imaging techniques and strain characterization at nanoscale.