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2055 |
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Development of Mechanisms and Frame Structures for a Laboratory-scale Compact Soft X-ray Microscopy |
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Equipment, Machines & Instruments: Design & Testing |
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| Content |
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With the rapid developments in biology and engineering, the need for microscopes with high magnification and resolution has increased. To meet these requirements, soft x-ray microscopy has been researched around the world. The wavelength of soft x-ray ranges from 0.1nm to 30nm, so that soft x-ray microscopy can deliver low tens of nanometer resolution images, which is much higher than that of optical microscopy and comparable to that of electron microscopy. In addition, soft x-ray microscopy doesn’t need specimen preparation such as sectioning or staining which is indispensable in electron microscopy. It means the hydrated bio-samples thick up to 10um can be imaged in a living state because x-ray has transmissibility much higher than electron beam.
Transmissibility of x-ray is highly related with atomic number. Especially, in the water-window region(lambda=2.3-4.4nm), the transmissibility of x-ray against water is 10 times higher than that against carbon which is called K-absorption edge. It makes the soft x-ray microscopy optimal for observing the bio-samples.
Since Röntgen discovered x-ray, a lot of possible implementation methods of soft x-ray micrsocopy have been researched. But they were hard to realized because of many instrumental problems, so that the improvement of soft x-ray microscopy were limited. For last a few decades, the development of x-ray optics with high efficiency and x-ray sources with high intensity from synchtorton have realized the soft x-ray micrsocopy. In recent days, especially, with the development of a laser-plasma based soft x-ray source to replace synchrotron, a laboratory-scale compact soft x-ray micrscopes started to be issued in x-ray micrscopy.
Compactness of soft x-ray microscopes helps loosening the burden of vacuum system, easy accessibility, and so on. Of course, with the improvement of total microscope system, the optics alignment mechanisms and frame structures also should be designed with compact size. It makes the design of mechanisms and structures more complicated than in case of soft x-ray microscopy using synchrotron. Design of frame structures and optics align mechanisms should be considered with the stability, i.e., vibration characteristics of microscope system. Optics alignment mechanism should be considered with the alignment performance too. Vibration characteristics and alignment performance directly influence the image resolution and contrast of soft x-ray microscope. In this paper, the development of mechanisms and frame structures for a laboratory-scale compact soft x-ray microscopy using a laser-plasma source is discussed. Design of mechanisms and structures are presented, and alignment performance and vibration characteristics are also presented. Finally, the images obtained using the compact soft x-ray microscope is presented. |
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