500-nm-resolution 10 keV X-ray imaging transmission microscope with tantalum phase zone plates

An imaging transmission hard X-ray microscope has been constructed at the Hyogo-BL (BL24XU) of SPring-8. It makes use of X-ray phase zone plates (PZP's) made of tantalum as its condenser and objective lenses. The objective PZP has an outermost zone width of 250 nm, which corresponds to the theoretically expected spatial resolution of 300 nm. An experiment was performed at the photon energy of 10keV to check the performance of the microscope. Since a 250 nm line-and-space pattern was clearly resolved, we concluded that the microscope attained a spatial resolution limit better than 500 nm. A few samples were also examined and the feasibility of the microscope was successfully demonstrated.