General-purpose, wide field-of-view reflection imaging with a tabletop 13  nm light source

Lensless imaging with short-wavelength light is a promising method for achieving high-resolution, chemically sensitive images of a wide variety of samples. The use of 13 nm illumination is of particular interest for materials science and the imaging of next-generation nanofabricated devices. Prior to this work, there was an unmet need for a microscope that can image general samples with extreme ultraviolet light, which requires a reflection geometry.

Here, we fulfill this need by performing lensless imaging using a 13 nm high-harmonic beam at grazing incidence, where most materials are reflective. Furthermore, we demonstrate to our knowledge the first 13 nm reflection-mode lensless microscope on a tabletop by using a compact high-harmonic generation source.

Additionally, we present an analytic formalism that predicts when general lensless imaging geometries will yield Nyquist sampled data. Our grazing-incidence ptychographic approach, which we call GLIDER, provides the first route for achieving wide field-of-view, high-resolution, lensless images of general samples with extreme ultraviolet and soft x-ray light.