A new technique with coherent X-rays to determine non-crystalline structures

Professor H. Dosch (Director of Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Germany) and his colleagues recently published a very interesting paper on the symmetry of disordered systems. They propose a new technique, X-ray cross correlation analysis (XCCA). This measures X-ray speckles and is basically an extension of X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS). The samples studied were colloidal glasses, and the research group was able to observe clear symmetries that conventional X-ray diffraction has been unable to extract. The research group recommends using brilliant coherent X-ray sources, such as X-ray free electron lasers for future research. For more information, see the paper, "X-ray cross correlation analysis uncovers hidden local symmetries in disordered matter", P. Wochnera et al., Proc Nat Aca Sci, 106, 11511 (2009).