Journal Article

Correcting angular distortions in Bragg coherent X‐ray diffraction imaging

Westermeier, Fabian, Dzhigaev, Dmitry, Lyubomirskiy, Mikhail, Wallentin, Jesper, Chen, Huaiyu, Björling, Alexander, Stuckelberger, Michael

2024

Overview

Bragg coherent X‐ray diffraction imaging (BCDI) has emerged as a powerful technique for strain imaging and morphology reconstruction of nanometre‐scale crystals. However, BCDI often suffers from angular distortions that appear during data acquisition, caused by radiation pressure, heating or imperfect scanning stages. This limits the applicability of BCDI, in particular for small crystals and high‐flux X‐ray beams. Here, we present a pre‐processing algorithm that recovers the 3D datasets from the BCDI dataset measured under the impact of large angular distortions. We systematically investigate the performance of this method for different levels of distortion and find that the algorithm recovers the correct angles for distortions up to 16.4× (1640%) the angular step size dθ = 0.004°. We also show that the angles in a continuous scan can be recovered with high accuracy. As expected, the correction provides marked improvements in the subsequent phase retrieval. An algorithm has been developed that effectively corrects and tracks angular distortions, enabling BCDI to work much more robustly and accurately in a wider range of challenging experimental scenarios.

• Publisher: International Union of Crystallography,John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Subject: Algorithms / angular corrections / angular distortions / angular uncertainty / Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics / Atom- och molekylfysik och optik (Här ingår: Kemisk fysik, kvantoptik) / BCDI / Bragg coherent X‐ray diffraction imaging / Crystal defects / Data acquisition / Datasets / Engineering and Technology / Fysik / Image reconstruction / Medical Engineering / Medical Imaging / Medicinsk bildvetenskap / Medicinteknik / nano-scale particles / Natural Sciences / Naturvetenskap / Phase retrieval / phase-retrieved objects / Physical Sciences / Radiation pressure / Research Papers / Teknik / X-ray diffraction