Abstract
Multi-slice X-ray ptychography offers an approach to achieve images with a nanometre-scale resolution from samples with thicknesses larger than the depth of field of the imaging system by modeling a thick sample as a set of thin slices and accounting for the wavefront propagation effects within the specimen. Here, we present an experimental demonstration that resolves two layers of nanostructures separated by 500 nm along the axial direction, with sub-10 nm and sub-20 nm resolutions on two layers, respectively. Fluorescence maps are simultaneously measured in the multi-modality imaging scheme to assist in decoupling the mixture of low-spatial-frequency features across different slices. The enhanced axial sectioning capability using correlative signals obtained from multi-modality measurements demonstrates the great potential of the multi-slice ptychography method for investigating specimens with extended dimensions in 3D with high resolution.
Highlights
Diffraction-based imaging techniques such as coherent diffraction imaging (Miao et al, 1999) and its scanning variant ptychography (Rodenburg et al, 2007) are being pursued to achieve the diffraction-limited spatial resolution beyond the focus size provided by X-ray optics
With low numerical aperture (NA) imaging systems, the achievable resolution is primarily limited by the X-ray wavelength and the maximum diffraction angle (Sayre et al, 1998)
Before the multi-slice ptychography measurement, a singleslice ptychography dataset was collected at a sample area with only the gold zone plate feature inside the field of view
Summary
Diffraction-based imaging techniques such as coherent diffraction imaging (Miao et al, 1999) and its scanning variant ptychography (Rodenburg et al, 2007) are being pursued to achieve the diffraction-limited spatial resolution beyond the focus size provided by X-ray optics. Considering that the depth resolution rz = 1.22/ (NA)2 (Born & Wolf, 1999) is much poorer than the resolution r in the lateral plane by a factor of NA/2, and the residual low-frequency features sweep through reconstructed slices, using the multi-slice ptychography method alone does not produce clean and isotropic 3D information.
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