A new advance in X-ray imaging has revealed the dramatic three-
dimensional shape of gold nanocrystals, and is likely to shine a
light on the structure of other nano-scale materials. Described
today in Nature Communications, the new technique improves the
quality of nanomaterial images, made using X-ray diffraction, by
accurately correcting distortions in the X-ray light. Dr Jesse
Clark, lead author of the study from the London Centre for
Nanotechnology said: "With nanomaterials playing an increasingly
important role in many applications, there is a real need to be
able to obtain very high quality three dimensional images of
these samples. "Up until now we have been limited by the quality
of our X-rays. Here we have demonstrated that with imperfect
X-ray sources we can still obtain very high quality images of
nanomaterials." Up until now, most nanomaterial imaging has been
done using electron microscopy. X-ray imaging is an attractive
alternative as X-rays penetrate further into the material than
electrons and