Novel X-ray lens sharpens view into the nano world A team led by DESY scientists has designed, fabri

Novel X-ray lens sharpens view into the nano world A team led by DESY scientists has designed, fabricated and successfully tested a novel X-ray lens that produces sharper and brighter images of the nano world. The lens employs an innovative concept to redirect X-rays over a wide range of angles, making a high convergence power. The larger the convergence the smaller the details a microscope can resolve, but as is well known it is difficult to bend X-rays by large enough angles. By fabricating a nano-structure that acts like an artificial crystal it was possible to mimic a high refracting power. Although the fabrication needed to be controlled at the atomic level — which is comparable to the wavelength of X-rays — the DESY scientists achieved this precision over an unprecedented area, making for a large working-distance lens and bright images. Together with the improved resolution these are key ingredients to make a super X-ray microscope. The team led by Dr. Saša Bajt from DESY presents the novel lens in the journal Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group). “X-rays are used to study the nano world, as they are able to show much finer details than visible light and their penetrating power allows you to see inside objects,” explains Bajt. The size of the smallest details that can be resolved depends on the wavelength of the radiation used. X-rays have very short wavelengths of only about 1 to 0.01 nanometres (nm), compared to 400 to 800 nm for visible light. A nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre. The high penetration of X-rays is favoured for three-dimensional tomographic imaging of objects such as biological cells, computer chips, and the nanomaterials involved in energy conversion or storage. But this also means that the X-rays pass straight through conventional lenses without being bent or focussed. One possible method to focus X-rays is to merely graze them from the surface of a mirror to nudge them towards a new direction. But such X-ray mirrors are limited in their convergence power and must be mechanically polished to high precision, making them extremely expensive. Read more. -- source link

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