Hard-X-ray phase-difference microscopy using a fresnel zone plate and a transmission grating.

Novel hard x-ray phase imaging microscopy that simply uses an objective and a transmission grating is described. The microscope generated an image that exhibited twin features of a sample with an opposite phase contrast having a separation of a specific distance. Furthermore, the twin features were processed to generate an image mapping the x-ray phase shift through a simple algorithm. The presence of the grating did not degrade the spatial resolution of the microscope. The sensitivity of our microscope to light elements was about 2 orders of magnitude higher than that of the absorption contrast microscope that was attained by simply removing the grating. Our method is attractive for easily appending a quantitative phase-sensitive mode to normal x-ray microscopies, and it has potentially broad applications in biology and material sciences.