Abstract
We have been developing a picosecond single shot soft x-ray contact microscopy system for observing the nanometer-scale inner structure of the living biological specimen in a hydrated condition. The microscopy system consists of an intense IR pump laser system for generating laser-induced plasma as a soft x-ray source and x-ray microscope chamber. The pump laser system employs OPCPA (Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplification) technique to obtain a high contrast pump laser pulse, and we can generate water-window x-rays effectively by combining it to an ultra-thin metal target. The x-ray microscope chamber is composed of a vacuum chamber, a focusing lens, a metal film target, an in-vacuum type sample holder. The pump laser pulse is focused on the metal film target with a focusing lens. The soft x-rays from the laser-induced plasma illuminates bio-specimens on the PMMA photo resist set in the in-vacuum sample holder. The photo resist is developed and the x-ray transmission image recorded on the photo resist is read out by AFM. We took x-ray images of hydrated Leydig cells from mouse testicle and demonstrated that the developed x-ray microscopy system has a spatial resolution of about 100 nm.
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