Neutron sub-micrometre tomography from scattering data

B Heacock; D Sarenac; D G Cory; M G Huber; J P W MacLean; H Miao; H Wen; D A Pushin

doi:10.1107/S2052252520010295

Neutron sub-micrometre tomography from scattering data

IUCrJ. 2020 Aug 20;7(Pt 5):893-900. doi: 10.1107/S2052252520010295. eCollection 2020 Sep 1.

Authors

B Heacock^{1

2}, D Sarenac^{3

4}, D G Cory^{3

5

6

7}, M G Huber⁸, J P W MacLean^{3

4}, H Miao⁹, H Wen⁹, D A Pushin^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
² Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
³ Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L3G1.
⁴ Department of Physics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L3G1.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L3G1.
⁶ Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L2Y5.
⁷ Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 1Z8.
⁸ National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA.
⁹ Biophysics and Biochemistry Center, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

Abstract

Neutrons are valuable probes for various material samples across many areas of research. Neutron imaging typically has a spatial resolution of larger than 20 µm, whereas neutron scattering is sensitive to smaller features but does not provide a real-space image of the sample. A computed-tomography technique is demonstrated that uses neutron-scattering data to generate an image of a periodic sample with a spatial resolution of ∼300 nm. The achieved resolution is over an order of magnitude smaller than the resolution of other forms of neutron tomography. This method consists of measuring neutron diffraction using a double-crystal diffractometer as a function of sample rotation and then using a phase-retrieval algorithm followed by tomographic reconstruction to generate a map of the sample's scattering-length density. Topological features found in the reconstructions are confirmed with scanning electron micrographs. This technique should be applicable to any sample that generates clear neutron-diffraction patterns, including nanofabricated samples, biological membranes and magnetic materials, such as skyrmion lattices.

Keywords: computed tomography; nanoscience; nanostructures; neutron diffraction; neutron scattering; phase retrieval.

Grants and funding

This work was funded by National Institute of Standards and Technology grant . U.S. Department of Energy grants 89243019SSC000025 and DE-FG02_97ER41042. Canada First Research Excellence Fund grant . Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant . Canada Excellence Research Chairs, Government of Canada grant .