National Institute of Standards and Technology Synchrotron Radiation Facilities for Materials Science.

Synchrotron Radiation Facilities, supported by the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, include beam stations at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory and at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The emphasis is on materials characterization at the microstructural and at the atomic and molecular levels, where NIST scientists, and researchers from industry, universities and government laboratories perform state-of-the-art x-ray measurements on a broad range of materials.

X-ray magnifier.

A method for the magnification of x-ray radiographic images is described and demonstrated. This magnifier employs two successive asymmetric diffractions of an x-ray beam from highly perfect silicon crystals. The two diffractions magnify the beam in two perpendicular directions. A device with a magnification of 25x is demonstrated for Cu K(alpha) radiation. This device preserves and sometimes improves the resolution inherent in the radiographic technique. The x-ray magnifier is particularly useful in circumventing the relatively poor spatial resolution of electro-optical imaging systems needed for real-time observations. Basic limits on magnification and resolution using this method are described.