Hard X-ray scanning microscopy with fluorescence and diffraction contrast

Abstract

Based on nanofocusing parabolic refractive X-ray lenses we have developed and built a hard X-ray scanning microscope that was tested and put to use at beamline ID13 of the ESRF. It can provide a monochromatic hard X-ray nanobeam with lateral extension below 100 nm (down to 50 nm) and a flux up to 10 9 ph/s in the energy range from 15 to 25 keV. The microscope exploits transmission, fluorescence, and diffraction contrast to obtain local elemental and nanostructural information from the sample. Tomographic scanning yields high resolution elemental maps from the inside of an object. Coherent X-ray diffraction imaging with nanofocused illumination yields images of objects with highest spatial resolution, e. g., 5 nm in a given example. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.