The highest resolution of images of soft matter and biological materials is ultimately limited by modification of the structure, induced by the necessarily high energy of short-wavelength radiation. Imaging the inelastically scattered X-rays at a photon energy of 60 keV (0.02 nm wavelength) offers greater signal per energy transferred to the sample than coherent-scattering techniques such as phase-contrast microscopy and projection holography. We present images of dried, unstained, and unfixed biological objects obtained by scanning Compton X-ray microscopy, at a resolution of about 70 nm. This microscope was realised using novel wedged multilayer Laue lenses that were fabricated to sub-ångström precision, a new wavefront measurement scheme for hard X rays, and efficient pixel-array detectors. The doses required to form these images were as little as 0.02% of the tolerable dose and 0.05% of that needed for phase-contrast imaging at similar resolution using 17 keV photon energy. The images obtained provide a quantitative map of the projected mass density in the sample, as confirmed by imaging a silicon wedge. Based on these results, we find that it should be possible to obtain radiation damage-free images of biological samples at a resolution below 10 nm.

X-ray double-crystal monochromators face a shift of the exit beam when the Bragg angle and thus the transmitted photon energy changes. This can be compensated for by moving one or both crystals accordingly. In the case of monolithic channel-cut crystals, which exhibit utmost stability, the shift of the monochromated beam is inevitable. Here we report performance tests of novel, asymmetrically cut, channel-cut crystals which reduce the beam movements by more than a factor of 20 relative to the symmetric case over the typical energy range of an EXAFS spectrum at the Cu K-edge. In addition, the presented formulas for the beam offset including the asymmetry angle directly indicate the importance of this value, which has been commonly neglected so far in the operation of double-crystal monochromators.

Spectra of quantum beats (QBs) of nuclear resonant forward scattering contain the interference information of all allowed energy transitions of a nucleus, which makes it complicated to extract hyperfine structure directly. Here, we propose a new method, based upon the extraction of prime beat components, to understand QBs. In this method, the origin of major spectral lines in the Fourier Transformation of QBs is studied, and the energy levels of hyperfine structure are obtained directly from the QBs. We applied this method to the temperature dependent QBs of hematite. The Morin temperature and hyperfine structure obtained by this method are in consistent with that by conventional Mössbauer spectroscopy (MS). It serves to interpret the components of QBs of nuclear resonant forward scattering as simple as the conventional (MS).

Nuclear resonant scattering quantum beats (QBs) spectrum reflects the interference information between all the possible energy transitions once which makes it difficult to analyze. Here we propose a new analysis method that can give the hyperfine structure directly from the QBs. As a case study, we analyzed QBs of a hematite sample at several temperature points across its Morin temperature. We observed that the transverse between the excited energy transitions which is accordance with the results obtained by the conventional MS method.