Development of a soft X-ray microscope with a intense laser-plasma soft X-ray source produced by a high power pulsed laser

Kado, Masataka; Kishimoto, Maki; Ishino, Masahiko; Tamotsu, Satoshi*; Yasuda, Keiko*; Aoyama, Masato*; Tone, Shigenobu*; Shinohara, Kunio*

Laser-plasma soft X-ray source produced by a high power pulsed laser is extremely bright and very suitable for biological X-ray microscopy to capture an image of living specimens which require a single flash exposure to avoid any damages on the specimens. We have developed a bright soft X-ray source irradiating a highly intense laser pulse generated by a Nd:glass laser system onto a thin foiled gold target. The highest intensity was obtained at the thickness of 400 nm and the photon flux was measured to be about 1.3 10 photon/sr. The photon flux on the specimens was estimated to be about 4.4 10 photons/m and it will give the spatial resolution of about 80 nm. The bright soft X-ray source was combined with a contact soft X-ray microscope and established as a laser plasma soft X-ray microscope. Live biological cells were observed with both of the soft X-ray microscope and a fluorescence microscope at the same time.