May 12 2021
X-ray ptychography has recently opened up applications across physical and life sciences at large-scale synchrotron facilities such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source, by producing quantitative phase images with the highest possible spatial resolutions (10’s nm) – going well beyond the conventional limitations of the available X-ray optics. Now an international collaboration of scientists has demonstrated for the first time how the technique of high-resolution phase contrast diffraction imaging can be performed with small-scale laboratory sources.
The team from Diamond Light Source, Ghent University, University of Sheffield, and University College London conducted an experiment with a compact liquid metal-jet (LMJ) X-ray source. Laboratory X-ray sources have significantly lower levels of brilliance but currently provide the X-ray synchrotron user community with access to micro-CT, where they can gain a great deal of experience and produce preliminary data, at their home institutions. Until now, no such equivalent has existed for nano-scale imaging through coherent diffraction imaging and ptychography. The team’s paper(1) outlines such an experiment and the first proof of concept for far field X-ray ptychography performed using an X-ray laboratory source.