Credit: Image courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory
An x-ray beam non-destructively tracked atomic-scale details in 3-D. Top view is a scanning electron micrograph 2-D image of a textured film composed of many nanoscale gold particles. The white circle identifies a particle that has been imaged in 3-D with a new coherent x-ray scattering technique that can be used in harsh environments. Top and side views of the imaged particle are shown (green overlays). A 2-D electron scattering orientation map of the same region (overlay in purple and red) shows the crystallographic texture of the film. The extracted 3-D images (bottom, green isolated particle views) show a similar but different particle from the film, before and after heating. Heat-induced changes include a filled cavity and removal of an atomic-scale “dislocation” defect.