Soft x-ray nanoscale imaging using highly brilliant laboratory sources and new detector concepts

In this contribution, we report about nanoscale imaging using a laser produced plasma source based laboratory transmission X-ray microscope (LTXM) in the water window. The highly brilliant soft X-ray radiation of the LTXM is provided by a laser-produced nitrogen plasma source focused by a multilayer condenser mirror to the sample. An objective zone plate maps the magnified image of the sample on the super resolution camera. This camera employs a deep cooled soft-X-ray CCD imaging sensor sandwiched with a xy piezo stage to allow subpixel displacements of the detector. The camera is read out using a very low noise electronics platform, also directing low µm shifts of the sensor between subsequent image acquisitions. Finally an algorithm computes a high resolution image from the individual shifted low-resolution image frames.