Nanotomography comes of age

摘要

The use of X-rays to construct three-dimensional tomographic images is well established in medicine. The same principle is being extended to the nanoscale, bringing us startlingly accurate pictures of tiny objects. Writing in Applied Physics Letters,Yin and colleagues1 report an X-ray microscopy technique of broad potential for three-dimensional imaging in the physical and life sciences. By tuning high-energy X-rays, the authors manipulate the contributions of specific chemical elements to a seriesof two-dimensional images. They then use tomographic methods to combine images taken at different incident X-ray angles, allowing internal structures and — given sufficient spectral resolution — chemical bondings to be discerned with a spatial resolution of around 60 nanometres.