Understanding the reactivity of mineral-water interfaces under complex and extreme environments remains a significant challenge.  Over the past few years, we have been developing a fundamentally new approach to the imaging of mineral interfaces, through the use of full-field X-ray reflection interface microscopy (XRIM).  This non-contact technique images the spatial variation of specularly-reflected X-rays to yield the structure and topography of a mineral surface at ~100-nm lateral resolution.  It uses the high structural sensitivity of X-ray reflectivity as the primary contrast mechanism.  I will describe our recent work in the development and application of this approach, with examples that illustrate the opportunities and challenges involved in its use for geochemical systems.    *This work is supported by the Geosciences Research Program (US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences).  The work was done in collaboration with Peter Cummings, Sebastien Kerisit, Paolo Raiteri and Julian Gale.

Imaging mineral-water interfaces with interfacial X-ray microscopy

247th National Meeting (2014)

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