Soft x-ray microscopy

Summary form only given. Soft X-ray microscopy is at the forefront of research with spatial resolution approaching 10 nm, and wide ranging applications to the physical and life sciences, including the dynamics of magnetic nanostructures, three-dimensional biotomography at the sub-cellular level, elemental and chemically specific environmental studies. Examples of recent work are shown below in figures 1-3. Figure 1 shows a general layout of the soft X-ray microscope XM-1 at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) synchrotron facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Figure 2 shows an image, at 15 nm spatial resolution, of nanomagnetic structures in a CoCrPt alloy as revealed by X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) using synchrotron radiation tuned to the cobalt L3-edge at 778 eV (1.59 nm wavelength). Figure 3 shows a natural contrast tomographic reconstruction of a whole yeast cell imaged in the water window at 500 eV (2.4 nm wavelength).