Full-field X-ray diffraction microscopy using polymeric compound refractive lenses

Diffraction imaging is the science of imaging samples under diffraction conditions. Diffraction imaging techniques are well established in visible light and electron microscopy, and have also been widely employed in X-ray science in the form of X-ray topography. Over the past two decades, interest in X-ray diffraction imaging has taken flight and resulted in a wide variety of methods. This article discusses a new full-field imaging method, which uses polymer compound refractive lenses as a microscope objective to capture a diffracted X-ray beam coming from a large illuminated area on a sample. This produces an image of the diffracting parts of the sample on a camera. It is shown that this technique has added value in the field, owing to its high imaging speed, while being competitive in resolution and level of detail of obtained information. Using a model sample, it is shown that lattice tilts and strain in single crystals can be resolved simultaneously down to 10⁻³° and Δa/a = 10⁻⁵, respectively, with submicrometre resolution over an area of 100 × 100 µm and a total image acquisition time of less than 60 s.