Development of a Wolter mirror soft X-ray phase contrast microscope for the observation of biological fine structure

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Development of a soft X-ray phase contrast microscope to observe microstructure of a biological sample.(1) Construction of a high-resolution and a high-magnification optical system.We performed design and production of a high-magnification optical system to get an image of a high-resolution image in real time. In order to shorten the optical system in large magnification we propose a new optics. We arranged two Wolter mirrors by a relay optical system. Two optical axes are not on the same axis. Although the length of the optical system was 2 times, 32 times magnification was obtained. As a result of this improvement, 1,024 times magnification was provided in a laboratory scale. Because the pixel size of an X-ray CCD camera was 24μm, the resolving power of better than 50nm were provided.(2) Observation of a wet sample.SiN film windows (about 500 μ m square) of 0.1,μm thickness were used for the windows of vacuum chambers and wet sample chambers. Wet specimens were sandwiched between two pieces of SiN membranes. We set this sample chamber in the stratum of air of about 2mm thickness. Using the Ta target which emit a continuous spectrum around 3nm in wavelength, we succeeded in taking soft X-ray microscopic images of wet red blood cells of chicken..(3) Construction of a soft X-ray phase contrast microscope.We built a soft X-ray phase contrast microscope to observe a low absorption contrast object. Two kinds of phase plates were prepared, one is a ring plate and the other is a ribbon one. We obtained soft X-ray phase contrast microscopic images of latex spheres(2.8 μ m in diameter). Soft X-rays used were several line spectra around 5nm emitted from Al target.