Submicrometer resolution hard X-ray holography with the asymmetric bragg diffraction microscope.

The asymmetric Bragg diffraction microscope is a novel x-ray microscope which forms a magnified in-line near-field hologram by asymmetric reflection from two crossed flat crystals. In this paper, the optics of the microscope is studied theoretically. The optical transfer function is obtained, and the limiting spatial resolution, rated at 25% modulation transfer, is determined to be 0.30 microm at an optimum magnification of 89x with Si crystals, over a wide range of hard x-ray wavelengths. Absorption and phase contrast images can be computed from holograms acquired at several object distances. Application to submicrometer resolution hard x-ray microtomography is envisioned.

National Institute of Standards and Technology Synchrotron Radiation Facilities for Materials Science.

Synchrotron Radiation Facilities, supported by the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, include beam stations at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory and at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The emphasis is on materials characterization at the microstructural and at the atomic and molecular levels, where NIST scientists, and researchers from industry, universities and government laboratories perform state-of-the-art x-ray measurements on a broad range of materials.