Low-loss ultraviolet (UV) transverse shaping has emerged as a critical enabling technology for modern photoinjectors, with fused-silica phase-plates offering a robust alternative to conventional shaping methods. Building on our NAPAC2025 work, we introduce a new generation of enhanced UV phase-plates that use genetically seeded structured-stochastic designs and multi-level nanofabrication. These designs are initialized using spiral-zone-plate phase patterns and yield smoother transverse profiles at the photocathode while further reducing normalized emittance. At LCLS-I, these phase-plates achieve a 25% emittance reduction (0.6 um to 0.45 um); beating expectations of 20% reduction predicted by Impact-T simulations. For AWA, we fabricated 2-inch fused-silica masks compatible with the upgraded gun and beamline optics. Leveraging multi-level nanofabrication capabilities at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, we produced plates with reduced phase quantization error, enabling high-quality shaping. These results broaden the design space for low-emittance, jitter controlled photoinjector operation demonstrating the maturation of passive UV beam shaping into a facility-ready technology.

The Linac Coherent Light Source II (LCLS-II) has been in user operations since 2023 and has successfully ramped up the beam repetition rate to 93 kHz. The LCLS-II photoinjector has demonstrated the ability to deliver a high-brightness, low-emittance electron beam at high repetition rates, meeting key performance targets. However, several operational challenges have emerged during commissioning and user operation. These include substantial gun dark current, degradation of cathode quantum efficiency (QE) manifesting as QE craters, unexpected electron beam splitting, significant emittance growth through the laser heater chicane, complications during laser heater commissioning, the presence of beam halos, cathode's QE dependence of the e-beam rate. This paper provides an overview of these challenges and highlights recent efforts to address these outstanding issues, and discuss plans for further improvement of the performance.