Design of a multilayer-based collimated plane-grating monochromator for tender X-ray range

Collimated plane-grating monochromators (cPGMs), consisting of a plane mirror and plane diffraction grating, are essential optics in synchrotron radiation sources for their remarkable flexibility and good optical characteristics in the soft X-ray region. However, the poor energy transport efficiency of a conventional cPGM (single-layer-coated) degrades the source intensity and leaves reduced flux at the sample, especially for the tender X-ray range (1 – 4   keV) that covers a large number of K- and L-edges of medium-Z elements, and M-edges of high-Z elements. To overcome this limitation, the use of a multilayer-based cPGM is proposed, combining a multilayer-coated plane mirror with blazed multilayer gratings. With this combination, the effective efficiency of cPGMs can be increased by an order of magnitude compared with the conventional single-layer cPGMs. In addition, higher resolving power can be achieved with improved efficiency by increasing the blaze angle and working at higher diffraction order.

Source: Journal of Synchrotron Radiation - December 20, 2016 Category: Physics Authors: Yang, X. Wang, H. Hand, M. Sawhney, K. Kaulich, B. Kozhevnikov, I.V. Huang, Q. Wang, Z. Tags: X-ray optics monochromator diffraction grating multilayer research papers Source Type: research