Hard-X-Ray Phase-Difference Microscopy Using a Fresnel Zone Plate and a Transmission Grating

Novel hard x-ray phase imaging microscopy that simply uses an objective and a transmission grating is described. The microscope generated an image that exhibited twin features of a sample with an opposite phase contrast having a separation of a specific distance. Furthermore, the twin features were processed to generate an image mapping the x-ray phase shift through a simple algorithm. The presence of the grating did not degrade the spatial resolution of the microscope. The sensitivity of our microscope to light elements was about 2 orders of magnitude higher than that of the absorption contrast microscope that was attained by simply removing the grating. Our method is attractive for easily appending a quantitative phase-sensitive mode to normal x-ray microscopies, and it has potentially broad applications in biology and material sciences.

Figure 1

Setup of phase-difference x-ray microscopy with single grating (Gl).

Figure 2

Phase image of PS spheres obtained by phase-difference microscopy (gray scale: $-0.5\pi \sim 0.5\pi$). (a) Entire field of view, where scale bar is given on detector. (b) Enlarged image in square area shown in (a) (gray scale: $-0.3\pi \sim 0.3\pi$). The scale bar is given on the object plane. (c) Section profile along the line shown in (b). The filled circles are the experimental data, and the solid line is the calculated data.

Figure 3

Phase images of $1\mathrm{\text{−}}\mu \mathrm{m}$-thick Ta Siemens star pattern. (a) Phase-difference image with overlapped features of opposite contrast and (b) retrieved phase image constructed from (a).