Polychromatic X-ray Micro- and Nano-Beam Science and Instrumentation

Polychromatic x-ray micro- and nano-beam diffraction is an emerging nondestructive tool for the study of local crystalline structure and defect distributions. Both long-standing fundamental materials science issues, and technologically important questions about specific materials systems can be uniquely addressed. Spatial resolution is determined by the beam size at the sample and by a knife-edge technique called differential aperture microscopy that decodes the origin of scattering from along the penetrating x-ray beam. First-generation instrumentation on station 34-ID-E at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) allows for nondestructive automated recovery of the three-dimensional (3D) local crystal phase and orientation. Also recovered are the local elastic-strain and the dislocation tensor distributions. New instrumentation now under development will further extend the applications of polychromatic microdiffraction and will revolutionize materials characterization.