Nanotomography based on double asymmetrical Bragg diffraction

Nondestructive investigations at ultrahigh spatial resolution can be carried out with synchrotron-based x-ray computer tomography. The performance of presently used detectors is restricted by scintillation properties, optical light transfer and charge coupled device granularity to a limit of 1 mum spatial resolution and efficiency of a few percent. A recently developed detector, called Bragg magnifier, exploits double asymmetrical Bragg diffraction to efficiently produce hard x-ray images with magnification factors up to 100x100 and pixel size of less than 200x200 nm(2). Combining it with tomography, we obtained full volumetric information of a sample with spatial resolution well below 1 mum in less than 40 min. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.