High spatial resolution x-ray spectroscopy with the XM-1 X-ray microscope

The XM-1 x-ray microscope was built to obtain high-resolution transmission images from a wide variety of thick (< 10 micron) samples. Modeled after a 'conventional' full-field microscope, XM-1 makes use of zone plates (ZP) for the condenser and objective elements. The XM-1 x-ray microscope has been shown to have a spatial resolution of 36 nm by doing a 10%-90% edge scan across a knife edge. Moreover, the condenser ZP and pinhole combination yields good spectral resolution to λ/Δλ of 700. We have shown that with this energy resolution we can distinguish between different elements and some chemical states. We can see spectra with adequate signal to noise even for individual 36nm pixels. With these capabilities, we are beginning work on various experiments in which we will distinguish different chemical species of specific elements within a sample