|
X-ray transmission microscopy is of importance for characterization of internal morphological structures in solid and liquid materials in a number of fields ranging from material science to biology, medicine, polymer science, geochemistry and environmental science. The analysis is based on photon absorption and phase shift. Application of tuneable, high intensity and collimated X-rays at third generation synchrotron light sources opened the possibility in the field of X-ray microscopy to probe heterogeneous phenomena on micro- and nano-scale. A new X-ray microscope Twinmic, was developed at synchrotron radiation facility Elettra in collaboration between eight European partners. It combines scanning and full-field imaging modes and operates under high vacuum ambient, air or inert gas atmosphere. Some selected applications using the Twinmic microscope in scanning mode will be presented. Human tissue around broken bone implants was imaged and the microscopic pieces broken from the implants analyzed. Another example is the study of ceramics based on the SiC powder coated by AlN. The distribution and size of grains during the ceramics sintering process has been revealed. Differential phase contrast images simultaneously acquired with the absorption images by configured detector improved significantly the sensitivity of imaging soft matter with x-rays. |