Figure 1

Schematic of the experiment. A beam of cold neutrons is passed through a $200\mu \mathrm{m}$ diameter Cd aperture to improve spatial coherence and then through a second “sample aperture” 1.5 m downstream in order to define angular divergence. The crystalline silicon block sample is positioned 0.75 m downstream of the second aperture. A charge coupled device (CCD) camera was placed 20 mm downstream of the sample in order to measure the “contact” or absorption image. The CCD camera was then positioned 1.42 m downstream of the sample to measure the phase contrast image.Reuse & Permissions

Figure 2

(a) Photograph of the sample; (b) normalized phase contrast image of the sample showing enhanced edge contrast and imperfections in the edges of the sample; (c) normalized contact image of the silicon block showing a negligible contrast; (d) recovered phase image of the silicon block using the data from (b). The degraded resolution is due primarily to the finite source size and limited statistics; (e) computer simulation of the image in (d).Reuse & Permissions

Figure 3

Comparison of profiles through the recovered phase [Fig. 2d] and computer simulation [Fig. 2e] of the silicon block. The agreement is excellent.Reuse & Permissions