Professor S. Techert (Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Goettingen, Germany) and his colleagues have reported on Bragg diffraction experiments with a soft X-ray laser (wavelength 8 nm, pulse width 30 fs, power 4×1011 photons/pulse) from the free electron laser at FLASH, Deutsche Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg. The research group studied Bragg diffraction patterns of single nano-crystal (20 nm×20 nm×20 μm) and powder with grain sizes smaller than 200 nm of silver behenate (AgC22H43O2, chain length 5.8 nm). So far, many coherent X-ray diffraction studies have been done even with soft X-ray wavelengths, but the present research aims at the analysis of periodic structures that are usually targets of X-ray diffraction with hard X-rays. They showed an interesting comparison between the single nano crystal and the powder, and also discussed the influence of the extremely high peak power of laser pulses. For more information, see the paper, "Diffraction Properties of Periodic Lattices under Free Electron Laser Radiation", I. Rajkovic et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 125503 (2010)
