Towards High Performance Soft X ray Cryo Tomography in the Laborator

Soft X ray microscopy is an ideal tool to fill the spatial resolution gap between visible light microscopy and electron microscopy. Transmission electron microscopy, due to its small penetration depth, requires extensive and highly invasive sample preparation, such as embedding and sectioning. Soft X ray microscopy XRM in the water window, in contrast, allows the structural investigation of samples in an aqueous environment with a penetration depth of up to 10 amp; 956;m and resolutions of a few ten nanometers which is achieved by utilizing radiation between the absorption edges of carbon and oxygen. Therefore, tomographic imaging of a sample can easily be realized using appropriate stages and adequate sample holders for vitrified, non embedded samples. Whereas most soft X ray microscopes rely on synchrotron radiation, this contribution presents a laboratory setup based on a highly brilliant laser produced plasma LPP source, aiming to increase the availability of water window XRM to a broader scientific community and at the same time offering a higher flexibility to the users [1]. A similar laboratory setup can be found at the KTH Stockholm [2