Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
A nondestructive method has been developed for quickly characterizing a 1 D crystalline structure. It required brilliant synchrotron x-rays in grazing incidence and an x-ray 2 D detector. X-ray patterns recorded on the detector showed anisotropically sheet-shape diffraction from NiO nanowires epitaxially grown on an ultra-smooth sapphire (0 0 0 1). Other shots obtained from Bi atomic wires embedded in Si (0 0 1) showed that the wires have a 2 × n superstructure, which indicated that the Bi-dimer bonds were parallel to the wires.