Development of single shot soft x-ray contact microscopy system for nano-scale dynamics measurement of living biological specimen

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 re...