Sacrificial tamper slows down sample explosion in FLASH diffraction experiments.
Intense and ultrashort x-ray pulses from free-electron lasers open up the possibility for near-atomic resolution imaging without the need for crystallization. Such experiments require high photon fluences and pulses shorter than the time to destroy the sample. We describe results with a new femtosecond pump-probe diffraction technique employing coherent 0.1 keV x rays from the FLASH soft x-ray free-electron laser. We show that the lifetime of a nanostructured sample can be extended to several picoseconds by a tamper layer to dampen and quench the sample explosion, making <1 nm resolution imaging feasible.
Hau-Riege
Stefan P
SP
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, California 94550, USA. hauriege1@llnl.gov
Boutet
Sébastien
S
Barty
Anton
A
Bajt
Sasa
S
Bogan
Michael J
MJ
Frank
Matthias
M
Andreasson
Jakob
J
Iwan
Bianca
B
Seibert
M Marvin
MM
Hajdu
Janos
J
Sakdinawat
Anne
A
Schulz
Joachim
J
Treusch
Rolf
R
Chapman
Henry N
HN
D004583:Electrons; D007834:Lasers; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction / Q000379:methods*; D014965:X-Rays