X pinch X-ray radiation above 8 keV for application to high-resolution radiography of biological specimens

The X pinch is a dense plasma X-ray source that is known to emit sub-ns bursts of X-rays in the 2.5 - 8 keV energy range from a very small (∼1 μm) source commonly referred to as a micropinch. As such, it has been successfully used as a point source for X-ray radiographic imaging of small biological samples with spatial resolution as good as 1 - 2 μm. Recent experiments show that the soft X-ray emission from a micropinch extends out to as high as 15 keV, and that there is also harder radiation from a slightly displaced, ∼100 μ source with photon energies reaching above 60 keV that appears to be due to the presence of a few ns electron beam pulse. Both of these harder X-ray sources are potentially useful X-ray sources for high-resolution radiography of thicker biological samples than we have previously imaged. A characterization of these two hard X-ray radiation sources from X pinch plasmas using a slit camera with different filters, as well as imaging a variety of biological objects on each pulse, revealed the energy range and source size of the micropinch radiation separate from the larger electron beam source. High-resolution images (1 - 10 μm scale resolution) of samples such as a boron fiber with tungsten core (2.5 - 12 keV) as well as a several mm thick chicken wing with bone (> 10 keV) will be presented.