Ptychography with broad-bandwidth radiation

Ptychography, a scanning Coherent Diffractive Imaging (CDI) technique, has quickly gained momentum as a robust method to deliver quantitative images of extended specimens. A current conundrum for the development of X-ray CDI is the conflict between a need for higher flux to reach higher resolutions and the requirement to strongly filter the incident beam to satisfy the tight coherence prerequisite of the technique. Latest developments in algorithmic treatment of ptychographic data indicate that the technique is more robust than initially assumed, so that some experimental limitations can be substantially relaxed. Here, we demonstrate that ptychography can be conducted in conditions that were up to now considered insufficient, using a broad-bandwidth X-ray beam and an integrating scintillator-based detector. Our work shows the wide applicability of ptychography and paves the way to high-throughput, high-flux diffractive imaging. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.