High resolution soft X-ray microscope capable of viewing 15 nm objects now available at Berkeley

For many years, great efforts have been made around the world to develop soft and hard X-ray microscopes. Very recently, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, California, USA, have succeeded in fabricating an extremely high-performance objective lens, i.e., a micro zone plate, which projects a full-field image of the sample. The spatial resolution is 15 nm or even smaller for synchrotron soft X-rays (150~1800 eV). The key point is the improvement in electron beam lithography, since the spread due to electron scattering has previously been a big problem when patterning. The Berkeley team separately drew two different zone-plate patterns and then overlaid them very accurately. For more information, see the paper, "Soft X-ray microscopy at a spatial resolution better than 15 nm", W. Chao et al., Nature, 435, 1210-1213 (2005).