Kierspel, ThomasMorgan, AndrewWiese, JossMullins, TerryAquila, AndyBarty, AntonBean, RichardBoll, RebeccaBoutet, SébastienBucksbaum, PhilipChapman, Henry N.Christensen, LaugeFry, AlanHunter, MarkKoglin, Jason E.Liang, MengningMariani, ValerioNatan, AdiRobinson, JosephRolles, DanielRudenko, ArtemSchnorr, KirstenStapelfeldt, HenrikStern, StephanThøgersen, JanYoon, Chun HongWang, FenglinKüpper, Jochen2023-12-072023-12-072020-02-27https://hdl.handle.net/2097/44082We report experimental results on the diffractive imaging of three-dimensionally aligned 2,5-diiodothiophene molecules. The molecules were aligned by chirped near-infrared laser pulses, and their structure was probed at a photon energy of 9.5 keV (λ ≈ 130 pm) provided by the Linac Coherent Light Source. Diffracted photons were recorded on the Cornell–SLAC pixel array detector, and a two-dimensional diffraction pattern of the equilibrium structure of 2,5-diiodothiophene was recorded. The retrieved distance between the two iodine atoms agrees with the quantum-chemically calculated molecular structure to be within 5%. The experimental approach allows for the imaging of intrinsic molecular dynamics in the molecular frame, albeit this requires more experimental data, which should be readily available at upcoming high-repetition-rate facilities.This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in [X-ray diffractive imaging of controlled gas-phase molecules: Toward imaging of dynamics in the moleculhttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/http://web.archive.org/web/20180624131647/https://publishing.aip.org/authors/web-posting-guidelinesText