Focus on X-ray Diffraction

摘要

X-ray microscopy fills the "resolution gap" between light microscopy and electron microscopy. The high penetration of x-rays in matter, however, makes the production of high-resolution lenses challenging. On page 379 of this issue, Thibault et al. (1) sidestep this problem by recording high-angle (and hence high-resolution) diffraction patterns in the microscope at each point along the specimen. This information is then used to increase the resolution of the image by more than a factor of four. Unlike "lensless" diffrac-tive imaging methods such as crystallography and coherent diffractive imaging (2), the scanning diffraction microscopy of Thibault et al. offers a general instrument to obtain images, zoom into regions of interest, and build up large fields of view of specimens, within minutes rather than hours.