Abstract
We have developed a randomized grating condenser zone plate (GCZP) that provides a µm-scale probe for use in x-ray ptychography. This delivers a significantly better x-ray throughput than probes defined by pinhole apertures, while providing a clearly-defined level of phase diversity to the illumination on the sample, and helping to reduce the dynamic range of the detected signal by spreading the zero-order light over an extended area of the detector. The first use of this novel x-ray optical element has been demonstrated successfully for both amplitude and phase contrast imaging using soft x-rays on the TwinMic beamline at the Elettra synchrotron.
Highlights
In recent years coherent diffraction imaging (CDI) techniques have exploited the very high brightness available at the latest generation of x-ray sources to provide high resolution imaging capabilities that can recover the full complex wavefield on the exit surface of the sample [1, 2]
A successful approach has been x-ray ptychography [3], which can be considered a hybrid of CDI and scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) that allows the imaging of extended objects with a spatial resolution that is significantly better than the lateral dimensions of the x-ray probe
In this paper we describe the first use of a novel form of phase-randomized grating condenser zone plate (GCZP) that can produce micron-scale x-ray probes with an enhanced and well-defined phase diversity, and much higher signal throughput than the combination of a probe-defining aperture and an x-ray diffuser that has previously been used in x-ray ptychography [30]
Summary
In recent years coherent diffraction imaging (CDI) techniques have exploited the very high brightness available at the latest generation of x-ray sources to provide high resolution imaging capabilities that can recover the full complex wavefield on the exit surface of the sample [1, 2]. A successful approach has been x-ray ptychography [3], which can be considered a hybrid of CDI and scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) that allows the imaging of extended objects with a spatial resolution that is significantly better than the lateral dimensions of the x-ray probe. This is attractive for x-ray imaging, where it is technically challenging and very expensive to produce high quality focusing optics that are capable of providing lateral resolutions of better than a few tens of nanometers. Increasing the diversity of the illuminating probe’s amplitude or phase has been found to improve the quality of image reconstructions in diffractive imaging, both from empirical observations [10, 11] and from a theoretical perspective [12,13,14,15]
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