Soft x-ray radiography based on X-pinch powered by portable pulse generator

The extremely low radiation source size and x-ray pulse duration achievable with x-pinches makes them promising tool for fast backlighting imaging of short living plasmas and for non-damaged imaging of biological specimens using soft x-rays (0.3 $\div$ 10 keV). We present a low-scale portable pulse power generator with an x-pinch load especially developed for pulsed soft x-ray radiography. The generator provides a 300-kA current pulse with a rise time of 180 ns with short circuit load. The generator can be placed within a 1x1 m$^{2}$ laboratory area. Using diffraction patterns observed with x-pinch made of four molybdenum wires with diameter of 25.4 $\mu $m the x-ray source size was estimated to be 0.5-2 $\mu $m in the spectral range near 3 keV. Clear soft x-ray backlighting images of different samples with temporal resolution of 2 ns and spatial resolution of few microns at magnification up to 20 were recorded. Using this portable generator with the x-pinch load allows one to realize the x-ray backlighting technique on different installations in different laboratories.