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Updated: Feb 6, 2026

Failure Analysis of Batteries Using Synchrotron-based Hard X-ray Microtomography
Published on: August 26, 2015
Nano-printed miniature compound refractive lens for desktop hard x-ray microscopy
Mona Mirzaeimoghri1,2, Alejandro Morales Martinez1, Alireza Panna1
1Imaging Physics Laboratory, Biochemistry and Biophysics Center, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America.
Abstract:
Hard x-ray lenses are useful elements in x-ray microscopy and in creating focused illumination for analytical applications such as x-ray fluorescence imaging. Recently, polymer compound refractive lenses for focused illumination in the soft x-ray regime (< 10 keV) have been created with nano-printing. However, there are no such lenses yet for hard x-rays, particularly of short focal lengths for benchtop microscopy. We report the first instance of a nano-printed lens for hard x-ray microscopy, and evaluate its imaging performance. The lens consists of a spherically focusing compound refractive lens designed for 22 keV photon energy, with a tightly packed structure to provide a short total length of 1.8 mm and a focal length of 21.5 mm. The resulting lens technology was found to enable benchtop microscopy at 74x magnification and 1.1 μm de-magnified image pixel size at the object plane. It was used to image and evaluate the focal spots of tungsten-anode micro-focus x-ray sources. The overall system resolution with broadband illumination from a tungsten-anode x-ray tube at 30 kV and 10 mm focal distance was measured to be 2.30±0.22 μm.
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