Diffraction Contrast Tomography: Unlocking Crystallographic Information from Laboratory X-ray Microscopy

X-ray tomography has operated under two primary contrast mechanisms for some time: X-ray absorption contrast, providing density information, and phase propagation contrast, providing enhanced interfacial information. These primary mechanisms are powerful and advanced laboratory-scale X-ray microscopy (XRM) platforms have demonstrated great improvements to this in recent years. XRM is enabling an additional modality known as diffraction contrast tomography (DCT) that provides crystallographic/diffraction information from polycrystalline samples, facilitating the ability to directly characterize a samples crystalline microstructure, non-destructively. This application note describes the capabilities of lab DCT on the ZEISS Xradia 520 Versa platform, and new research and characterization capabilities it enables.