Photonic or electronic confinement effects in nanostructures become significant when one of their dimension is in the 5-300 nm range. Improving their development requires the ability to study their structure - shape, strain field, interdiffusion maps - using novel techniques. We have used coherent diffraction imaging to record the 3-dimensionnal scattered intensity of single silicon nanowires with a lateral size smaller than 100 nm. We show that this intensity can be used to recover the hexagonal shape of the nanowire with a 28nm resolution. The article also discusses limits of the method in terms of radiation damage.
Measurement modalities in Bragg coherent diffraction imaging (BCDI) rely on finding signal from a single nanoscale crystal object, which satisfies the Bragg condition among a large number of arbitrarily oriented nanocrystals. However, even when the signal from a single Bragg reflection with (hkl) Miller indices is found, the crystallographic axes on the retrieved three-dimensional (3D) image of the crystal remain unknown, and thus, localizing in reciprocal space other Bragg reflections becomes in reality impossible or requires good knowledge of the orientation of the crystal. We report the commissioning of a movable double-bounce Si (111) monochromator at the 34-ID-C end station of the Advanced Photon Source, which aims at delivering multi-reflection BCDI as a standard tool in a single beamline instrument. The new instrument enables this through rapid switching from monochromatic to broadband (pink) beam permitting the use of Laue diffraction to determine crystal orientation. With a proper orientation matrix determined for the lattice, one can measure coherent diffraction near multiple Bragg peaks, thus providing sufficient information to image the full strain tensor in 3D. We discuss the design, concept of operation, the developed procedures for indexing Laue patterns, and automated measuring of Bragg coherent diffraction data from multiple reflections of the same nanocrystal.
We present here an overview of Coherent X-ray Diffraction Imaging (CXDI) with its application to nanostructures. This imaging approach has become especially important recently due to advent of X-ray Free-Electron Lasers (XFEL) and its applications to the fast developing technique of serial X-ray crystallography. We start with the basic description of coherent scattering on the finite size crystals. The difference between conventional crystallography applied to large samples and coherent scattering on the finite size samples is outlined. The formalism of coherent scattering from a finite size crystal with a strain field is considered. Partially coherent illumination of a crystalline sample is developed. Recent experimental examples demonstrating applications of CXDI to the study of crystalline structures on the nanoscale, including experiments at FELs, are also presented.
Coherent diffraction imaging (CDI) on Bragg reflections is a promising technique for the study of three-dimensional (3D) composition and strain fields in nanostructures, which can be recovered directly from the coherent diffraction data recorded on single objects. In this article we report results obtained for single homogeneous and heterogeneous nanowires with a diameter smaller than 100 nm, for which we used CDI to retrieve information about deformation and faults existing in these wires. The article also discusses the influence of stacking faults, which can create artefacts during the reconstruction of the nanowire shape and deformation.
The fluctuations of the longitudinal coherence length expected from the worlds first hard X-ray Free Electron Laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source, are investigated. We analyze, on a shot-to-shot basis, series of power spectra generated from 1D-FEL simulations. We evaluate how the intrinsic noise in the spectral profile of the X-ray beam reflects on its longitudinal coherence length. We show that the spectral stability of the LCLS beam will allow coherent X-ray experiments with a reasonable acquisition time. We also propose a scheme to deliver single-mode X-ray radiation using a narrow bandpass monochromator.
In this two-part article series we provide a generalized description of the scattering geometry of Bragg coherent diffraction imaging (BCDI) experiments, the shear distortion effects inherent to the resulting three-dimensional (3D) image from current phase retrieval methods and strategies to mitigate this distortion. In this Part I, we derive in general terms the real-space coordinate transformation to correct this shear, which originates in the more fundamental relationship between the representations of mutually conjugate 3D spaces. Such a transformation, applied as a final post-processing step following phase retrieval, is crucial for arriving at an un-distorted and physically meaningful image of the 3D scatterer. As the relevance of BCDI grows in the field of materials characterization, we take this opportunity to generalize the available sparse literature that addresses the geometric theory of BCDI and the subsequent analysis methods. This aspect, specific to coherent Bragg diffraction and absent in two-dimensional transmission CDI experiments, gains particular importance concerning spatially-resolved characterization of 3D crystalline materials in a realiable, non-destructive manner. These articles describe this theory, from the diffraction in Bragg geometry, to the corrections needed to obtain a properly rendered digital image of the 3D scatterer. Part I provides the experimental BCDI communitcy with the theoretical underpinnings of the 3D real-space distortions in the phase-retrieved object, along with the necessary post-retrieval correction method. Part II builds upon the geometric theory developed in Part I with the formalism to correct the shear distortions directly on an orthogonal grid within the phase retrieval algorithm itself, allowing more physically realistic constraints to be applied.