Grazing-incidence ultrasmall-angle X-ray scattering imaging with X-ray transmission gratings: A feasibility study

X-ray grating interferometry has been spotlighted in the last decade as a technique for X-ray phase imaging and tomography. In this paper, we report that this interferometry can also be applied to the real-space mapping of weak diffuse scattering (ultrasmall-angle X-ray scattering) in grazing incidence geometry. A preliminary experiment using a laboratory X-ray source demonstrated that image contrast is successfully generated by the diffuse scattering from a micrometer-sized structure fabricated on a silicon wafer. This technique works with a large beam with a wide angular spread from a low-brilliance X-ray source, and has potential to become a powerful tool for mapping structures in real space from which ultrasmall-angle X-ray scattering arises. (C) 2014 The Japan Society of Applied Physics