Towards nanotomography with asymmetrically cut crystals

The most used detection system in state-of-the-art synchrotron-based microtomography devices usually collects light produced by a thin scintillator and conveys it to charge coupled device (CCD) through a microscope optics. This detection system is intrinsically limited by scintillation properties, optical coupling and CCD granularity to a practical limit of about 1 μ m spatial resolution and efficiency of a few percent. A novel detector, called Bragg magnifier, is a method recently proposed to efficiently exceed the micrometer barrier. It exploits two-dimensional asymmetric Bragg diffraction from flat crystals to produce X-ray images with magnification factors up to 150 × 150 and pixel sizes less than 100 × 100 nm 2 . This work presents its functional principle, some applications and future developments.