A continuous kilohertz Cu Kα source produced by submillijoule femtosecond laser pulses for phase contrast imaging

We report a continuously operated Cu Kα x-ray source produced by a commercial kilohertz submillijoule femtosecond laser system. The source has an x-ray conversion of ∼4×10−5 into Kα line emission at 8.05 keV. The microplasma x-ray source has a size of 8 μm (full width at half maximum) produced by focusing 260 μJ laser pulses on a moving Cu-wire target. An average photon flux of ∼1.1×109 photons/sr/s is obtained using the above laser pulses. The source has been used to record phase contrast images of test samples. This compact x-ray source can serve as a low cost operating system for phase contrast imaging in clinical applications.