Abstract
Femtosecond vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation provided by the free-electron laser FLASH was used for digital in-line holographic microscopy and applied to image particles, diatoms and critical point dried fibroblast cells. To realize the classical in-line Gabor geometry, a 1 microm pinhole was used as spatial filter to generate a divergent light cone with excellent pointing stability. At a fundamental wavelength of 8 nm test objects such as particles and diatoms were imaged at a spatial resolution of 620 nm. In order to demonstrate the applicability to biologically relevant systems, critical point dried rat embryonic fibroblast cells were for the first time imaged with free-electron laser radiation.
Highlights
Due to their specific interaction with matter x-rays are a versatile probe to study biological objects
Femtosecond vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation provided by the free-electron laser FLASH was used for digital in-line holographic microscopy and applied to image particles, diatoms and critical point dried fibroblast cells
In order to demonstrate the applicability to biologically relevant systems, critical point dried rat embryonic fibroblast cells were for the first time imaged with free-electron laser radiation
Summary
Due to their specific interaction with matter x-rays are a versatile probe to study biological objects. The recorded diffraction pattern contained information about the test object as the short pulses were able to scatter (or diffract) from the object before it exploded For the future such experiments can be anticipated at even shorter wavelength with the currently constructed x-ray free-electron lasers in the USA, Japan, and Germany [11,12,13]. For these new FEL sources, microscopy techniques are desired which exploit the high peak brilliance and coherence provided in order to study biological samples. The obtained reconstructions have the highest resolution ever achieved with digital in-line holography using VUV femtosecond pulses and are the first in-line holographic microscopy results ever measured at a VUV free electron laser
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