Coherent diffraction imaging with hard x-ray waveguides

Coherent X-ray diffraction imaging (CXDI) has been widely applied in the nanoscopic world, offering nanometric-scale imaging of noncrystallographic samples, and permitting the next-generation structural studies on living cells, single virus particles and biomolecules. The use of curved wavefronts in CXDI has caused a tidal wave in the already promising application of this emergent technique. The non-planarity of the wavefront allows to accelerate any iterative phase-retrieval process and to guarantee a reliable and unique solution. Nowadays, successful experiments have been performed with Fresnel zone plates and planar waveguides as optical elements. Here we describe the use of a single planar waveguide as well as two crossed waveguides in the experiments which first showed this optical element a promising tool for producing a line- or point-like coherent source, respectively