Characterization of a 20-nm hard X-ray focus by ptychographic coherent diffractive imaging

Recent advances in the fabrication of diffractive X-ray optics have boosted hard X-ray microscopy into spatial resolutions of 30 nm and below. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of zone-doubled Fresnel zone plates for multi-keV photon energies (4-12 keV) with outermost zone widths down to 20 nm. However, the characterization of such elements is not straightforward using conventional methods such as knife edge scans on well-characterized test objects. To overcome this limitation, we have used ptychographic coherent diffractive imaging to characterize a 20 nm-wide X-ray focus produced by a zone-doubled Fresnel zone plate at a photon energy of 6.2 keV. An ordinary scanning transmission X-ray microscope was modified to acquire the ptychographic data from a strongly scattering test object. The ptychographic algorithms allowed for the reconstruction of the image of the test object as well as for the reconstruction of the focused hard X-ray beam waist, with high spatial resolution and dynamic range. This method yields a full description of the focusing performance of the Fresnel zone plate and we demonstrate the usefulness ptychographic coherent diffractive imaging for metrology and alignment of nanofocusing diffractive X-ray lenses.