Intense laser-plasma soft-X-ray sources and application for biological X-ray microscopy

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

Although soft X-ray microscope has an ability to observe live biological cells, in order to avoid radiation damages onto the biological cells the cells had to be frozen and live cell imaging was not realized. Since laser-plasma soft X-ray source was extremely bright and had short pulse duration, it makes possible to capture soft X-ray images of biological cells before the cells damaged. Since the spatial resolution of the soft X-ray microscope depends on the photon flux irradiated onto the samples, it is important to increase brightness of the soft X-ray sources to observe inner structures of biological cells. We have increased the brightness of the soft X-ray source and succeeded to observe inner structures of live biological cells.