Fluorescence microtomography using nanofocusing refractive x-ray lenses

Fluorescence microtomography is a hard x-ray scanning microscopy technique that has been developed at synchrotron radiation sources in recent years. It allows one to reconstruct non-destructively the element distribution on a virtual section inside a sample. The spatial resolution of this microbeam technique is limited by the lateral size of the microbeam. Since recently, nanofocusing refractive x-ray lenses (NFLs) are under development that were shown to produce hard x-ray microbeams with lateral resolution in the range of 100nm. Future improvements of these optics might reduce the microbeam size down to below 20nm. Using nanofocusing lenses, fluorescence microtomography with sub-micrometer resolution was performed. As an example, the element distribution inside a small cosmic dust particle is given. Tomographic reconstruction was done using a refined model including absorption effects inside the sample.