Studying single nanocrystals under high pressure using an x-ray nanoprobe

In this report, we demonstrate the feasibility of applying a 250-nm focused x-ray beam to study a single crystalline NbSe(3) nanobelt under high-pressure conditions in a diamond anvil cell. With such a small probe, we not only resolved the distribution and morphology of each individual nanobelt in the x-ray fluorescence maps but also obtained the diffraction patterns from individual crystalline nanobelts with thicknesses of less than 50 nm. Single crystalline diffraction measurements on NbSe(3) nanobelts were performed at pressures up to 20 GPa.