Imaging of nanoislands in coherent grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering experiments

Coherent x-ray scattering in a grazing-incidence geometry was used to image SiGe nanoislands grown by liquid phase epitaxy on Si(001). Due to their narrow size distribution, identical shape, and orientation, the total scattered intensity obtained in this geometry represents a coherent diffraction pattern from an average island. Iterative phase retrieval techniques were used for the reconstruction of the projected electron density of hundred nanometer size islands. So far other x-ray imaging methods do not achieve the obtained spatial resolution of 10-15 nm for islands of this size.