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In a flash diffraction experiment, a short and extremely intense x-ray pulse illuminates the sample to obtain a diffraction pattern before the onset of significant radiation damage. The over-sampled diffraction pattern permits phase retrieval by iterative phasing methods. Flash diffractive imaging was first demonstrated on an inorganic test object (Chapman et al 2006 Nat. Phys. 2 839-43). We report here experiments on biological systems where individual cells were imaged, using single, 10-15 fs soft x-ray pulses at 13.5 nm wavelength from the FLASH free-electron laser in Hamburg. Simulations show that the pulse heated the sample to about 160 000 K but not before an interpretable diffraction pattern could be obtained. The reconstructed projection images return the structures of the intact cells. The simulations suggest that the average displacement of ions and atoms in the hottest surface layers remained below 3 angstrom during the pulse.

Theory predicts(1-4) that, with an ultrashort and extremely bright coherent X-ray pulse, a single diffraction pattern may be recorded from a large macromolecule, a virus or a cell before the sample explodes and turns into a plasma. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of this principle using the FLASH soft-X-ray free-electron laser. An intense 25 fs, 4 x 10(13) W cm(-2) pulse, containing 10(12) photons at 32 nm wavelength, produced a coherent diffraction pattern from a nanostructured non-periodic object, before destroying it at 60,000 K. A novel X-ray camera assured single-photon detection sensitivity by filtering out parasitic scattering and plasma radiation. The reconstructed image, obtained directly from the coherent pattern by phase retrieval through oversampling(5-9), shows no measurable damage, and is reconstructed at the diffraction-limited resolution. A three-dimensional data set may be assembled from such images when copies of a reproducible sample are exposed to the beam one by one(10).

The digitization of this collection was funded by a gift from EBSCO Industries.