Nanostructure analysis using coherent x-ray diffraction

X-ray crystallography can routinely determine the atomic structure of crystalline materials. The method can be extended to non-crystalline materials by using coherent X-ray diffraction. In X-ray diffraction microscopy, coherent X-ray diffraction patterns are sampled finely enough to satisfy the oversampling condition for solving the phase problem, and the iterative phase retrieval method is used for the sample image reconstruction. Recently, we succeeded in three-dimensional visualization of an unstained human chromosome by X-ray diffraction microscopy. It is the first hard X-ray tomography for cellular organelles. The reconstructed images revealed the internal axial structure, demonstrating an excellent image-contrast of the method. (author)