STROBE Seminar: Controlled Environment Nano-Imaging Free From Radiation Damage by X-ray Laser Diffraction

Coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) is a growing technique in photon science. CDI has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for visualizing cells and organelles using synchrotron radiation. X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) with femtosecond 3pulse durations further extends the ability of CDI to achieve spatial resolution beyond the conventional radiation-damage limitation. We performed live cell nano-imaging using a Japanese XFEL facility, SACLA. We employed pulsed coherent X-ray solution scattering (PCXSS), a form of X-ray CDI, developed by our group [1,2]. A unique feature of PCXSS is to keep solution sample under a controlled environment in micro-liquid enclosure array (MLEA) chips. We succeeded in reconstructing a live cell image from a coherent diffraction pattern recorded with a single XFEL shot. The reconstructed image quantitatively revealed the internal structures, e.g. high image intensity structure indicative of dense DNA [2]. PCXSS can also be effectively applied to nano-imaging of materials functional in solution. For example, we successfully imaged gold nanoparticle self-assemblies, developed as drug delivery carriers, in solution [3,4]. We also initiated industrial application of XFEL in collaboration with Toyota Motor Corp [5]. Furthermore, as recent developments in PCXSS, we report on time-resolved pump-probe measurement, temperature-controlled measurement, utilization of ~100-nm focused XFEL, etc.