Revealing Three-Dimensional Structure of an Individual Colloidal Crystal Grain by Coherent X-Ray Diffractive Imaging

We present results of a coherent x-ray diffractive imaging experiment performed on a single colloidalcrystal grain. The full three-dimensional (3D) reciprocal space map measured by an azimuthal rotationalscan contained several orders of Bragg reflections together with the coherent interference signal betweenthem. Applying the iterative phase retrieval approach, the 3D structure of the crystal grain wasreconstructed and positions of individual colloidal particles were resolved. As a result, an exact stackingsequence of hexagonal close-packed layers including planar and linear defects were identified