University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA · US · publishing in AM since 2016
In-situ synchrotron X-ray imaging of LPBF melt-pool and pore dynamics
Tao Sun is Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Virginia and previously a beamline scientist at Argonne National Laboratory's Advanced Photon Source. His group pioneered the use of high-speed synchrotron X-ray imaging to visualise LPBF melt-pool dynamics, vapour depression, keyhole formation, and pore evolution in real time — work that has fundamentally changed the experimental basis of LPBF process physics. The Argonne-developed Bragg coherent imaging and high-speed X-ray imaging diagnostics have produced widely cited papers in Science and Nature Communications on keyhole pore formation mechanisms and spatter dynamics. Sun continues to collaborate closely with the Argonne APS team and with LLNL on linking these observations to physics-based melt-pool models.
Last reviewed: 2026-05-16 · Sources: 2
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