Coherent Diffractive Imaging Using Phase Front Modifications

We introduce a coherent diffractive imaging technique that utilizes multiple exposures with modifications to the phase profile of the transmitted wave front to compensate for the missing phase information. This is a single spot technique sensitive to both the transmission and phase shift through the sample. Along with the details of the method, we present results from the first proof of principle experiment. The experiment was performed with 6.0 keV x rays, in which an estimated spatial resolution of 200 nm was achieved.

Figure 1

Schematic of the experimental setup.

Figure 2

Reconstructed transmission (a) and phase shift (b) images through the sample. The horizontal lines indicate the location of the profile transmission plot (c) and phase shift plot (d).

Figure 3

Object update vs iteration number. The lower circles are the change in the image update for the uniform attenuation ($a=0.5$) and zero phase shift starting guess; the upper triangles correspond to the average update progression for 100 random initial guesses.