X-rays are commonly used to study everything from semiconductors to proteins. But the special optics commonly used to focus these rays struggle to produce images better than a few tens of nanometres in resolution.
Christian Schroer of the Technical University in Dresden, Germany, and his colleagues have improved their X-ray vision by using better beams. A coherent X-ray beam 100 nanometres in diameter produced a diffraction pattern (pictured) that could be processed to reveal details of a small gold particle just 5 nanometres across. The technique may be used in future large-scale X-ray facilities.
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X-ray physics: Superman's sharper vision. Nature 455, 140 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/455140d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/455140d